The Rusted Carousel
by Frosty Autumn
Summary: Come one, come all! A treat for the eyes and a feast for the senses, Haly's Circus is back in town! In the days preceding Haly's visit to Gotham, resident tightrope walker, Bessie "Stratosphere" Struna, starts noticing odd behavior from the snake dancer's son Jerome. Enter and take your seat. The countdown to the snake dancer's murder is about to begin...
1. Blüdhaven

Dazzling color—pastels, mattes, metallics, and more.

Balloons—foil, latex, animals galore.

Human spectacles—stilts, fire breathers, and acrobats are what the audience stayed for. Haly's Circus was only too eager to cater to every whim of the imagination.

Fun had a unique scent, and Bessie Struna knew exactly what it smelled like. A busy popcorn cart here, a humming cotton candy machine there, in which an attendant was twirling a paper cone to twist and build colored cobwebbing until a fluffy mass formed. The intoxication of sweet and salty smells bombarding guests from every angle, the energetic buzz of a crowd, even the parched, packed dirt and patchy grass underfoot added to an overall rustic, outdoorsy scent.

No sense was left neglected. While the nose was busy, the eyes were stimulated by thousands of light bulbs, some draped aloft by wire between wooden poles. Combined, the picture gave off a country summer night kind of atmosphere.

Bessie watched from the window of her parked caravan, dabbing off the last of her white stage-makeup over the kitchen sink. Judging by the appearance of wandering fairground guests, the show was at Intermission.

Outdoor sounds were muted, save for the crickets hopping near her front stairs. Her humble home's entrance door was wide open, protected by a mesh screen, to let a little cool air inside the warm trailer. A busy swarm of tiny black pinpricks swirled like a mini-cyclone on the other side of the glass. Gnats weren't the most bothersome pest, though. Bessie quite liked Blüdhaven for its lack of mosquitoes the last time she was here.

The air outside was pleasantly balmy, and the sunset hour was clear. Only a smear of purple clouds sat on the peachy horizon. The sky was turning bluer and bluer by the minute.

Nothing short of a magical evening in Blüdhaven.

Following her tightrope act, Bessie normally stayed to watch the rest of the show. The finale called for every performer to gather in the center ring and simultaneously bow for their curtain call. They wouldn't miss her just this once, though. Tonight would be the last night to do this, after all, at least until the show fulfilled all scheduled stops and pulled a roundabout back to Blüdhaven. A year or two in-between cities wasn't all that uncommon for the in-demand Haly's Circus, the one and only venue to watch the legendary Flying Graysons live.

After rinsing off the make-up streaked dish cloth under the tap, Bessie wrung it out and draped it over the faucet. Drying her hands on her black jeans, she crossed the length of her one-lane caravan home. Her own enthusiasm surprised even her. Visiting the old carousel again after a couple years absence perhaps wasn't a monumental deal to the rest of the kids (she felt as though she were really the last one to recall the old thing anymore) but not all hope was lost yet.

She practically trotted down the metal caravan stairs. A tiny warmth, born from nostalgic fondness, was sending pleasant jolts down her legs, lending an involuntary energy to her step, like gravity dialed down just one notch.

Like a lighthouse beacon, the lively carousel situated beside the gargantuan candy-cane striped Haly's Circus tent was alive and spinning, safely slow enough to make out every individual bulb lining it, but swift enough to hook and enchant the eye.

But that was not the one she intended to visit.

"Ladies and gentleman," called an official announcement from the loudspeakers placed on poles every thirty yards, "please make your way back to your seats. In ten minutes time we will begin part two of our act."

Bessie recognized Clarence's warm, golden voice. If being a circus ringmaster didn't pan out, she was sure there were very few radio stations that would reject him as their headliner.

Every so often she'd pass a guest going the opposite way, headed for the Big Top tent. After a left detour and a short journey, she entered a cluster of more silver caravans on the edge of their encampment, working as the fairground border just before an endless, grassy field beyond. A few notes of the carousel's delightfully goofy, uptempo organ music could still be heard, but the supporting melody was mostly drowned out by distance now.

Her fluffy, bouncy brown hair brushed and tickled her jawbone, heaving with her jaunty stride. Her eyes were small, almost slitted, and colored a swampy, murky green. Many features of her face, such as her nose and ears, were pinched and pointy, like an elf's, which served to make her appear more mischievous than she really was. Her rounded face took some of the edge off. She could and would no sooner prank someone than willingly stand in as Leo Baccardi's assistant. Being the resident knife thrower, Leo could not complete his act convincingly without a Target Girl.

Bessie looked over her shoulder nervously as if she was asking the circus permission to leave. She wouldn't be gone too long before her parents would miss her. Her mother was probably still working the ticket booth, and her father in the portable trailer office.

Her tightrope walking was usually always scheduled in the First Act where the routines were mainly designated to warm up the crowd and stir some excitement in preparation for the thrilling Second Act finale. The Grayson trapeze was Haly's mainstay and star attraction, always saved for last. They'd been a part of the circus for generations. Bessie, in comparison, was only first generation; just a sprout compared to their oak. No legacy.

The awe she still felt as she watched them perform up there had a hard time getting old. The Graysons tended to switch up or add to their act every once in a while to stay fresh, and they wowed every time.

Bessie stopped momentarily to get her bearings and chart the best course in the direction of the field. She glanced up and down the maze path of caravan walls, wondering if anybody was still around.

"Hey, Bess," greeted a cordial voice behind her.

Bessie's smile was already emerging before her one-eighty was complete. "There you are, Jerome."

There he stood, outside of the caravan he shared with his mother, tending to the inside of a barred cage against the trailer shell. Tonight, Jerome wore a grey and red argyle pullover and sand-colored corduroy pants. He was a young man, just a year older than Bessie, with very relaxed eyes. But most noticeable of all was his impressively red hair, so blazing that it even looked warm to the touch. In recent years he tended to keep it smooth and tidy, combed in a side parting with just a touch of pomade for hold.

Jerome lifted his woolly arm currently in a state of being gently squeezed by three laps of snake tail. "Did you want to see Sheba?"

A brief flash of Bessie's teeth peeked through her grimace. "Um...sure," she said hesitantly. She took one or two tentative steps forward.

Jerome smiled gently. "Still haven't warmed up to her, have you?"

"It's been a few years, I think by now it's safe to say I never will." She didn't feel so bold as to complete the last five steps necessary to be within arm's distance of the cage.

Sheba, the snake Lila used in her sideshow act, was a female boa constrictor. Bessie wasn't sure how to tell a female snake from a male one, but she took the Valeska's word for it.

She knew it as a creature of this beautiful Earth, and acknowledged that the snake didn't know how it looked to her, but Bessie was still more than willing to volunteer a few steps back at all times. Those instinctual, vertically slitted eyes staring at her, the flickering forked tongue emerging; it was all very predatory, nature's signs to stay away.

Luckily for her, Jerome was nothing but cooperative. This time and all others before it. "There you go," he coaxed, lowering Sheba's long, curling, patterned body back into her enclosure. Bessie swallowed now that the snake was contained.

Jerome tended to keep more to himself these days. It didn't seem like an isolation experiment to Bessie, though, just that he and the other circus kids had grown apart somewhat. Bessie had felt that growing divide, too, but she was desperate to keep tabs with the circus kids while they all still had the time. Time had made them extended family, fortifying bonds from initially nothing. Something as simple as a conflict of interests didn't feel enough to deter her from keeping their ties strong and attended.

The last time she'd spoken to Jerome in particular was probably about two weeks ago. In terms of knowing somebody for thirteen years, working with them, and sharing a general radius with them, that type of frequency could be considered abnormal.

"So," said Jerome conversationally, bringing down Sheba's cage lid and snapping the padlock shut. "What brings you here?"

"I was on my way out there, actually." Bessie pointed to the open field. "I was hoping somebody could come with me. It's our last day in Blüdhaven."

"The old carousel," said Jerome knowingly, straightening from his bent position.

He remembered.

"So how about it?" asked Bessie. "Before we lose the light?" She tried to hide the invitation in her tone; it was better for Jerome to choose to join her of his own volition rather than be guilted into tagging along for her sake.

Jerome cocked a suspicious, inquisitive brow. "Really," he said. Coyly, he glanced side to side, ascertaining to whether passerby were listening in. Satisfied at the sparseness, he leaned closer. "Where's'about, how far, and will it take us past curfew?"

Bessie's responding smile was little, but bright.

Jerome opened his mouth, just about to say something, when he was interrupted by an amused cackle that rang behind them. Jerome's smile loosened, as did Bessie's. He looked past her, and she glanced over her shoulder.

Apparently Bessie wasn't the only performer skipping tonight's curtain call.

Jerome's mother sauntered into view, still clothed in her sparkling, airy, snake dancer's outfit. She wasn't alone. Arm in arm with a well-dressed stranger, she swayed, leaning into her friend, bent by giggles, evidently entertained by something the man had said.

The two teens shifted their eyes to anything else but each other. The nature of Ms. Valeska's behaviour was something they both recognized, and with that came discomfort. Jerome attempted to send Bessie an apologetic half-smile, but it weakly puttered out before his cheek could twitch.

Bessie's parents always called Jerome's mother Ms. Valeska in front of their daughter and taught her that it was impolite to call adults by their first names. Unless given permission, of course. The habit was so ingrained that Bessie continued to call her Ms. Valeska even now. But she knew the snake dancer's first name well enough. Some days she was all everyone talked about—some good, some bad, but more often than not, mostly scandalous.

Lila Valeska was lovely in appearance, even if her face was showing some signs of her age. Bessie actively tried to not find reason to insult her. Ms. Valeska could actually be quite charming on good days, but could be moody and temperamental on others. It was a toss-up on which you'd get day to day. Flattery worked immensely well, though, if done correctly.

Lila's swankily dressed companion noticed Jerome as he was guided towards the caravan steps. "What's up, freakshow?" he said chipperly, ruffling Jerome's hair as he passed by. The gesture looked innocent, but Bessie wasn't quite certain of the intention. The comment didn't sound too friendly. More mocking than anything else, leading her to believe that this particular man was not strange around the Valeska trailer.

The door shut smartly with a metallic clank.

Grasshopper music accompanying the evening seemed amplified.

Jerome cast his gaze to the ground and brought a fist to his mouth to politely mask clearing his throat. Salvaging their carefree moment felt hopeless. "Well, I'm sure mom wouldn't miss me for a little while."

Bessie's lip curled as she followed the two silhouettes, separate for the time being, through one of the Valeska caravan windows. "Probably," she agreed quietly. Unwelcome heat was rising from her neck, like she was trespassing on something she shouldn't have been and would do well to vacate soon. With nothing else to say, she led the way, trusting Jerome to stay right behind her, dead yellow grass sighing underneath her shoes.

Weaving through the metallic forest of Haly's parked trailers, the fairground gave way to the enormous field. Acres and acres of nothing but land that stretched to the horizon.

With Ms. Valeska long behind them, their mood gradually improved. Throughout the years it seemed to get easier and easier to tough out, they'd had been through it enough times that the awkward aftermath got shorter and shorter.

Standing just on the edge of the field, beside the final lightbulb-strung pole, they looked out into the grassy expanse. A miniature, misshapen mound was visible somewhere on the pastel horizon.

"There it is," said Jerome.

Bessie beamed cheekily. "So they didn't take it down yet." She looked sidelong at her friend. "Race you."

Dust kicked behind Jerome, and only when he'd cleared ten feet between them did it dawn on Bessie to get a move on.

"Hey!" Bessie took off, sprinting behind him, careful to mind the mole hills.

* * *

At the distance they were at, it wasn't easy to get lost.

The Big Top they left behind was barely visible. It sat right on the line where earth met sky, just a tiny tent that could fit into the palm of Bessie's hand. Haly's working carousel, still brilliantly lit, could fit like a golden pearl on her ring. Even if she and Jerome lost all natural light, the carousel would stay there to guide them home again. Bessie found solace in that thought for more than one reason.

As Haly's shrank, the _other_ carousel's lonely, dilapidated frame grew.

"It's still here," she said, beaming.

The thing was a poor investment. It tilted to one side, not leveled because one of its stands had snapped off. The paint needed updating—the original coat was likely lead-based, for starters—as did the speaker system and motor parts. It was easier to just chuck it and purchase a newer model rather than refurbish such a dreadful fixer-upper. Various bits of nature's cast-offs peppered the sheet metal platform that supported the poles elevating the horses.

During daytime, the horses looked happy and doe-eyed with their mouths open mid-neigh. However, at night, shadows played with the horse's angles. Slanted just right when dusk came out to play, the eyes became replaced with looks of terror. The edges of the mouths appeared to stretch downward, like the animals were about to retreat in frozen horror. The poles seemed more like skewers. Crusty rust made the horse's bodies texturized and sharp to the touch. At least that's what Bessie guessed based on sight. She wasn't going to risk tetanus to know for certain.

The result was that the machine almost looked haunted.

And while Bessie did believe in her fair share of ghost stories, this carousel was not one of them. Too many happy memories in her mind clung to this place for it to be. It was not an object to be feared, only a shaped hunk of machinery that had seen better days, and a legacy ended by unceremonious retirement from duty. There was something about it that still said home. It was where the circus kids got to bond for a few summers, back when Haly's stayed mainly in Blüdhaven.

Back then, the kids skilled in acrobatics were much more tuned to climbing to the very top. They would leave the little ones behind, and Bessie would gaze up at them in awe, shielding her eyes from the sun, envious of their dexterity where they could reach new heights. John Grayson, having descended from a long line of acrobats, was particularly adept at swinging and catching and clambering his way to the striped, pointed peak.

Jerome took a seat on the edge of the main platform. Bessie walked delicately along it, holding out her arms in a T-pose for balance while she spoke. A ring of dry dirt dusted the soles of her shoes from her run. "Think you're gonna miss it?" she asked.

"Mm, nah." Jerome grabbed onto a horse's leg over his shoulder, frowning as he tested it for stability. "I guess it was better when we were kids. Kinda boring now that we have nothing to do on it."

Bessie slowed down, a little stung by the confession. Somewhere, though, in a deep recess within her chest that cared to admit it, she knew he wasn't wrong. Try as she might to suppress it, there was a reluctant part of her that almost agreed. It was clear that, yes, maybe they had outgrown this part in their lives. Still, she hoped he didn't mean it.

"Not that I don't mind seeing it again," Jerome assured, looking out into the empty field. "We had some good times here, huh?" He looked over his shoulder kindly. "But it's just a memory now."

Bessie stopped her tracing and dropped from the edge and onto the ground with a soft _thump_. "I know," she admitted heavily. "Just wish everyone else could have been here for a proper send-off." Circling to Jerome's spot, she sat down beside him and settled comfortably to watch the gorgeously speckled sky. Out here the view was left untouched by light pollution from the city's core, and it showed.

The sun was finally gone. All that it left behind was a lavender horizon, signalling twilight hour.

"Thanks for coming with me tonight," Bessie told him gratefully. "At least someone did."

"You're not even mad at the others?"

Bessie held a structure pole beside her and leaned against it. "I wouldn't go that far. It is what it is, I can't make them do anything." In truth, maybe it did make her feel a little pushed aside, but it wouldn't do anyone any good to forcefully gather her old friends and bring them somewhere they just had no interest in anymore. Mandatory remembrance cheapened pure reactions.

"Come to think of it," continued Jerome, "I've never heard you scream, I've never heard you yell. Ever in my life."

"Guess I just have one of those quiet voices," Bessie said, using the same pole to help lift herself back onto the platform to carry on meandering and discovering what changed about the carousel from the last visit. Jerome was right, Bessie's voice did tend to be mousy. Her timbre was softened and unclear, like her throat was coated in a paste that absorbed half the sound as her voice journeyed up.

"I don't even think you're capable of it," mused Jerome, twisting to watch her.

Bessie shrugged apologetically. "I guess I just don't like raising my voice?" she tried. It was hard to explain the whys and hows of something that just came naturally.

"Why not?"

"It doesn't feel good. Feels kind of unnatural, you know?"

"Don't you ever get mad?"

"Well of course I do. I'm not a robot."

"I've never seen it. Unless you count that one time we all made you cry when we told you a mouse wasn't supposed to leave candy under your pillow."

Bessie chuckled good-naturedly at the memory and hoisted herself gingerly onto a white horse with a baby blue saddle covered in daisies—the only one that appeared to have better immunity to rust than the others. "Losing baby teeth goes a bit different in Slovenia."

"What did you call him again? Zongo Meeshka?"

Bessie's voice cracked with a snicker. " _Zobno Miško_ ," she corrected. "I had never heard of the tooth fairy back then."

Jerome laughed, which always came off as very sweet, well-meaning, and unoffending to Bessie; a fun, chuckling, mostly subdued _Hee hee hee_. "Yeah," he said wistfully.

With nothing left to say, he leaned forward, linked his fingers loosely, and hung them over his knees. Gazing skyward, he paused in contemplative thought. "Nice night," he commented.

"Mm-hm," Bessie agreed, looking up as well. A lush, autumnal scent emanated from the wild long grasses and was undoubtedly refreshing to breathe in.

A few beats passed until Jerome decided to continue his original tangent. "I mean, I've seen you upset lots of times," he clarified. "But now that I'm really thinking about it—it's been what, thirteen years since you joined Haly's?—and I have never seen you completely lose it."

Bessie wasn't sure where to go from there. All she could do was shrug apologetically. She noticed Jerome pressing his lips in mild thought.

"Does this have something to do with what happened back there with your mom?" she asked, but very delicately. If the doors were meant to stay closed then she was only too prepared to step off.

Jerome faced her. "Hmm, nah," he said breezily, shaking his head and waving her concern away.

"And you're sure you're both not mad at eachother?"

He shrugged nonchalantly. "Mm, she can be a bit pushy sometimes, and maybe I can be too, but I'll always love her. We're family." Like water off a duck's back.

Bessie nodded, leaving the subject where it stayed. As long as he was fine she wouldn't discomfort him with prying.

The better part of their next hour was spent mainly on reminiscing, and maybe a little bit of catching up. Living and working together in the same place didn't always guarantee frequent socialization. Bessie and Jerome's roles at Haly's were different, and unfortunately it pulled them apart in recent months.

It pulled them all apart.

Some families from their childhood years had since moved on from Haly's Circus, or settled down, or retired. But the majority still stuck around. John Grayson was too good for anybody now that he got his own motorcycle. Mary Lloyd thought she was too grown-up for such things, as did her brothers. That went for the Paisley twins as well, and Marko, Helena, and Boris had aged well beyond the need to share social circles with the circus kids under the age of twenty. That left just one more person, the only one who didn't seem to outgrow her.

Pleasantries and fleeting laughs were still exchanged between the circus kids—cramped living arrangements naturally kept proximity close—but they were mostly kept brief and left with no follow-up, abandoned as the carousel the children all left behind.

Shy as Jerome was, he could always be conversational enough. Bessie didn't realize just how much she missed talking to him. It was like slipping into an old, familiar routine.

* * *

 **A/N: Heads-up, folks, this is a partially pre-Gotham deal, so Jerome hasn't quite snapped as of yet, but I plan to blend this narrative into his introductory episode in the future. Just like my last Gotham entry on this site, 'Necessary Evil', I fully intend to stay as in-character as possible, as they were depicted in the show, while also borrowing from Batman comics and established storylines as filler for things the show hasn't revealed. My OC was not in the show, so she won't show up anywhere you saw in Jerome's debut episode.**

 **I know Jerome was never officially tagged as The Joker, and after the Season 2 Episode 3 doozy it looks like he may not be (barring some sort of "Ha-Ha, fooled you!" resurrection). But come on, he totally was The Joker, even if not by name. In essence at least. So I plan to write him as such.**

 **NOTE: John Grayson and Mary Lloyd are actual DC characters (and parents to the future Robin, Dick Grayson), but I made up the other circus kids and personnel in order to get some filler and add more life to Haly's.**

 **It feels so good to be writing for the Gotham fandom again...**


	2. Same Routine

It was time to go.

No internal clock or lack of conversation told them so. Rather, it was because of their speck of a circus tent deflating like a grounded hot air balloon; Haly's was dismantling and preparing for the trip to their next scheduled stop: Gotham.

Jerome watched it happening from afar, lazily knocking his fist into his other hand. "'Bout time we should get going, huh?" he said.

Bessie looked out, too, and sighed heavily. "Yeah," she agreed.

He chanced a look up at her. "You gonna be okay?"

"Oh, I'm fine," Bessie promised. She even nodded affirmatively. "I'll be okay." She didn't mean to sound distant, but for now, more than anything, she just sought to absorb every sensory stimulant to memory—to better look back on. She inhaled deeply through her nose, inflating her lungs with the scent of dirt. She gave one last, solid look at the structure pole she was holding onto and patted it like the care she was committing would spread to the whole machine. "I had my fun."

To even prove to Jerome that she was ready, she left the platform first. Walking off the two foot drop, barely raising any dirt on landing, she languidly spun on the balls of her feet to face him, waiting.

Spirits lifted at having been able to spare this moment, a new, temporary boon developed in their walk on the journey back. Although Bessie felt that perhaps this was the last time she'd ever see the abandoned carousel with company ever again, she felt positive and glowing. Maybe even ready to let go in some way.

Instead of the racing this time, the two of them adopted breezy strides, with occasional bursts of jogging before settling back down. Their parents were probably wondering where they were, they couldn't dawdle too long.

"Hey, Jerome?" said Bessie when they were midway through the field. Haly's tent was completely downed by this point.

"Hm?" He brushed aside a patch of wiry tall grass.

"Thanks for coming. I would have felt silly being there on my own."

Jerome said nothing. But he smiled. Very warmly.

Bessie kept her eyes on the path, but she slowly succumbed and wore a smile to match.

Through the hustle and bustle of a small-scale crew already working on bringing down the poles holding the lightbulb strings aloft, the two kids weren't really noticed.

"See you in Gotham," said Jerome, flashing his palm in a stationary goodbye.

Bessie nodded swiftly, and they parted ways, taking opposite paths traversing through the caravan maze back to their respective homes.

" _Elisabeta?_ Where were you?" her mother asked conversationally when her daughter entered their caravan, adding jokingly while putting away dishes in the cupboard, "We almost leave you behind!"

An hour later, Haly's rolled out in an organized convoy of hitched trailers, and merged onto the dark road headed for Gotham. The only evidence remaining of their existence was the patterned swirls and dents they left in the parched dirt.

* * *

The next afternoon was pale grey and misty, dampened by a few scattered showers. Haly's Circus arrived on time and was already settling by the time Bessie awoke mid-morning. The crew was already at work erecting the giant tent in preparation for their three day stay in Gotham. It was always easier to disassemble than build. While taking it all down was only a matter of a handful of hours, assembling all over again was a matter of two days. Mother Nature's leniency on the rain today was helpful and thankfully did not create a soupy mixture on their foundation's surface; therefore, operations were moving like clockwork. Gotham would get their spectacle right on time.

After breakfast, Bessie was rinsing her syrup streaked plate when her mother emerged from their caravan's lone bedroom—more of a single bed surrounded by four walls and a door than an actual room. Bessie usually slept on the built-in sofa's fold-out mattress on the caravan's opposite end.

" _Ljubica_?" said her mother, holding up a pair of Bessie's lavender and mint-green checkered performing tights. "I sewed the rip in your...what you call it?"

Caught halfway between the two, Mr. Struna, seated at the dining table which folded up like an ironing board when not in use, chose that moment to look up from his newspaper. "Magda," he admonished in an accent equally as thick as his wife's, "you live in this country for fourteen years and _still_ not know the word for stretchy pants?"

"Hush," ordered Mrs. Struna flatly, unfurling the tights, snapping them out, and giving them a once over to check the quality of her work.

Bessie's parents had never really planned on their daughter becoming a part of the circus. She was just along for the ride when they immigrated from Slovenia when she was four years old. To cut a short story even shorter, her calling was just a matter of when.

Mr. and Mrs. Struna were not circus performers. Magda worked the ticket entrance booth, while Lovro was part of a team of tax accountants on Haly's payroll that traveled on-hand at all times. Naturally, those were not jobs kids aspired to. Bessie developed more of an attraction to the performers when she first arrived, hand-in-hand with her mother during a rehearsal. There wasn't really a draw to fulfill a destiny, no insane pull that could not be denied, Bessie just felt inclined to try, like a kid with the world's greatest playground at their disposal.

Once the Struna family settled in a day or two later and Bessie was able to officially meet the performers during another rehearsal, she experimentally stepped onto the tightrope—two feet off the ground for practical purposes—like any kid would a swing or a slide. And just like any kid would, the difficult but seemingly surmountable challenge brought her back from failure again and again.

Additionally, she lacked her parent's accent. The circus had tutors on hand during its travels, but they didn't offer lessons in Slovene, and so, English had the upper hand in her education.

She swirled a dishtowel over her plate to dry it off. Placing it in the cupboard, she announced to her parents, "I'll be back for lunch!"

Crossing the caravan's single, cramped lane to her sofa bed, she hooked her well-worn training shoes with two fingers. Made of thin, yielding leather tied with shoestrings, the shoes would have closely resembled lace-up crew socks had it not been for the suede sole.

Plucking a pear from the fruit bowl beside the sink on the way out, Bessie waved to her parents and bounced down the two metallic stairs, the closest thing to a porch she'd ever known. The rain had decided to return, but the droplets were light and sparse enough to where Bessie forgoed pulling up her fleece hood. The little raindrops were so tiny that they could barely prick her scalp through her fluffy thicket of hair.

The journey was short, but invigorating. Fresh, dewy air that smelled of wet dirt sent a rush through Bessie's lungs. A secondary, smaller, plain white tent was just off sight from the striped Big Top. It had no official name, some just called it the practice tent. Rehearsals were saved for the actual Haly's tent.

The canvas flap was already pulled and tied aside, beckoning early-risers inside.

Tossing the pear core into a trash can just outside the temporary fixture, Bessie entered and quietly passed a handful of others who'd decided to put in their day's fine-tuning as well, but not forgetting to nod them a good morning in passing. She was careful to side-step Darryl who was currently fifteen feet tall, elevated by his stilts.

Her practice wire was set-up in a secluded spot toward the rear, and that was just fine by her. This apparatus was nowhere near as towering a height as the Big Top's, no way. This one was only a mere four feet off the ground, no higher than a gymnast's balance beam, which offered an obvious safety contingency, not to mention Mr. and Mrs. Struna's peace of mind.

All in all, from featured performers, to caretakers, to technical and mechanical crew, no less than one hundred people were on Haly's payroll altogether.

Bessie curled her legs and gracefully dropped onto the mat, shedding her sneakers and lacing up her walking slippers.

It wasn't really a tight _rope_ these days anymore, more of a cable pulled taut. Cables possessed more ability to grip, whilst rope fibres tended to be silky. Not ideal when walking barefoot.

Though Bessie had adopted tightrope walking very early in life, her growth spurt a couple years back threw off her center of gravity. It wasn't like she needed to train all over again, but it definitely took her a step backward. The subsequent restoration process was more like she had to get acquainted with her new body, recalibrate, and find how to train her new dimensions in order to return to the skill level she previously possessed.

Bessie pulled her laces tight, looping a secure double knot, letting her feet feel the comforting pressure. Not that she wanted to fall off the rope in the first place, but Mr. Haly was especially insistent on nothing coming loose, and was constantly nipping at her tail for complete and utter safety at all costs. He was a good man, of course, didn't want to see anybody get injured, but there was also a secret weighing on his shoulders. Likewise, on everybody's shoulders who were in the know.

For Bessie's birth certificate had been altered to skirt child endangerment and labor laws. The truth was, she was only seventeen. Her certificate, however, fast-forwarded the aging process to coincide with the year befitting a nineteen year old.

Insanely illegal? You bet it was.

Did Bessie mind? It was...complicated.

The short answer was no, not really as much as it should have.

If asked, Bessie would insist vehemently that she would never want to break the law! And she meant it. Honest. But when one's life was the circus, when an act utilized a talent you've spent almost your entire existence perfecting, one tended to forget little things such as being twelve months short of a minimum age requirement. The applause when she finally crossed the thread and stepped onto the opposite platform was unlike any other. Crowds were hardly visible from that high up. Not even black silhouettes filling the stands were easily seen when she was under blazing spotlights, but she could hear it. Haly's Circus was a livelihood.

So not only was strict, cautionary protocol necessary for Bessie's continued well-being and success with the circus, but it also kept Mr. Haly from being investigated, subsequently arrested, and leaving the entirety of her extended family without a home.

After a few limbering stretches. Bessie was ready. She climbed the little built-in steps posted end to end, and, with nary a thought to the sudden, significant spatial shrink of her path, she tightened her core, adopted a T-pose, and leaned onto the cable. Balance was all in the upper body and the positioning of the arms. Spreading them out was always best.

Today was the day. It was going to happen.

For weeks Bessie had been determined to add a new trick to her repetoire; a back-flip. Clarence told her it may have been too ambitious, and he may have been right. It was supremely difficult for all the very reasons one could think of. Landing her feet was near impossible to line up just right, and considering she was at greater risk of plummeting during a show when the tightwire was ascended into the canopy, the trick was made infinitely more dangerous as well.

Despite gunning for it, even Bessie had her doubts whether it was even possible. Three weeks in and a successful result was yet to be seen. What she was attempting was akin to navigating a car backwards with no steering wheel. Sure, the basic mechanics would work, a car still had a reverse gear and Bessie knew how to backflip smoothly. But, to nail it?

Bessie was more of the idea that she just wanted to see if she was capable, if discipline and fortitude could really make it possible. If the trick did end up being just way too dangerous in practice, she would give it up. A fleeting gasp from the audience wasn't worth her life, she knew this.

She had to try, though. A couple bruised tailbones from a four foot drop wasn't all that bad. Not when something incredible, perhaps even career-defining, could come of it.

She gracefully scuttled across the line to the opposite end as a warm-up, just for the elevated sensation to sink in. Up there, she was double her own height. Her tiny feet were a blessing—only size four. Less surface area, less likelihood of tripping over her own feet. Of course, sometimes not enough surface area was just as bad.

In addition to her elfish features, Bessie's mere four foot, ten inch height did little to break the diminuitive illusion. Madame Gregoire, Haly's former horse handler, even had a pet name for her, and back then Bessie had no idea what it meant. _Ma Petite Fille_. Even when Madame retired and moved away to a quiet Quebec suburb, Bessie never forgot it. The name didn't make her feel small, it made her feel acknowledged and worthy of a name; to take what could be construed as a detriment and own it as a positive. Madame Gregoire was a strict, austere woman who expected manners to be at the forefront at all times, but she never said a mean word against anyone. The nickname she bestowed Bessie was in the same vein as 'sweetheart' or 'honey'—only personalized.

For the next hour, Bessie set herself up, crouching slightly to prepare to spring back, only to meet failure again and again. Sometimes she would land on her behind and manage to wrap her legs over the cable at the last second, hanging from the line like a sloth. More rarely, she would miraculously manage to briefly land one foot, but that only meant she was off-center, so the crash mat caught her instead.

Creating entertainment was not as fun as watching it. Sometimes the most technical twists and muscle-straining tricks would be met with lukewarm reception, but the easy flourishes could draw thunder.

After another disappointing round, she needed to give herself a break before her mind did. Dropping down, she paced on flat, solid ground for a little bit to regain momentum. She rubbed her neck, trying to trample her discouragement and keep it under lock and key.

On her third lap, she noticed the Graysons, led by John, strutting in through the tent flap all the way on the other end, and she stopped.

Unlike everyone else, the acrobats got to practice in Haly's tent. Not for any preferential treatment from the owners, but rather, the regular practice tent couldn't accommodate their lofty trapeze. So, the Graysons likely showed up for another reason. Bessie hoped John would make eye-contact with her so that she could wave, but he clearly found what he was looking for: Mary Lloyd.

Disappointment weighed down Bessie's gut. But it was okay. John was probably occupied, had no time for chit-chat. She brushed the missed opportunity off and kept busy by hoisting herself back onto the tightwire.

The next half hour was just as bruise-inducing and frustrating as every hour that came before it. Bessie was flat on the mat again, staring up at the fine, industrial-grey line, taking a deep, bracing breath. _Fortitude_ , she reminded herself. _Do it again_. If she counted how many times she'd failed, she'd never have the determination to try again.

Just as Bessie got back on her feet and prepared to vault herself onto the tightwire again, she noticed someone in the vicinity.

Jerome.

He was in profile, arms crossed, studying the apparatus's rigging beside the end post.

"Hey, Jerome," Bessie greeted brightly, "how—". Her sentence shriveled in her throat and she slowed to a halt. "—where did you get that?"

Jerome angled his face strategically from view. "It's nothing," he insisted, concentrating on the ground.

But Bessie knew better than to walk away. She closed in and circled to face him head-on, struggling to find what she thought she saw. He didn't even really try to hide it.

"Oh, Jerome..." she moaned. "What happened to you?"

Jerome pressed his lips and scratched behind his ear. "So, remember that guy who swung by my mom's last night?"

"Yeah?"

Jerome indicated his injury. "Decided to swing by me, too. Left a little parting gift."

A mottled purple-grey streak with a sickly yellow border underlined his right eye. When Bessie leaned closer to inspect the damage, she saw a subtler shadow adding a filled ring around Jerome's eye socket.

He looked at the floor and shrugged, adding, "I probably deserved it, too." Jerome was much too nonchalant about it.

"Don't say that," Bessie said quietly. Her brows were knitted tight. Her spirit deflated, she felt powerless. She wanted to make things right on his behalf, but where could she even start? This wasn't fair.

She wanted to be angry, truly, because he wasn't going to do it. But all she could feel was the pool of growing pity in her stomach. Bessie couldn't stop staring. She'd never gotten a black eye in her life, but she could easily imagine the discomfort, tenderness, and pain.

"Did you want some ice on that?" she asked. She didn't know what else to say, it was all she could think of—just something to make things a little better.

Jerome breathed in to answer when he was cut off by a distant but piercing shout. Instinctively, they cut off their conversation to look for the source.

It was Mary Lloyd. And she was fuming, staring down John Grayson.

"They're fighting again, aren't they?" said Jerome.

Bessie nodded. These days it seemed that the Lloyds and Graysons were only more than willing to get into a verbal tussle. Sometimes a physical one if they were inebriated enough.

Bessie and Jerome were too far removed to make out the words, but they could sure decode the tone. By now Mary's brothers were holding her back, but they, too, were throwing some barbs at the Graysons. A circle of performers were now gathering. Darryl the stiltwalker had loped over to try and break them up, speaking down from his height. The clowns—make-up and costumeless today—pedaled over on their unicycles to arrive faster, promptly hopping off them to get between Mary and John.

"We should probably get out of here," said Bessie heavily. There was nothing she felt she could do but only add to the confusion.

Jerome agreed.

Bessie quickly unlaced her walking slippers and wedged on her runners. Slippers in one hand, she then took Jerome's with the other, and led him around the expanding cluster, ducking her head low in case something went flying, and out into the drizzly afternoon.

The animosity and competitiveness between the Graysons and the Lloyds was a long, complicated story. Bessie only had bits and pieces over the years, but from what she could gather, pride was on the line.

And that was something the Graysons and Lloyds both had in spades.

That was one of the reasons why the trips to the rusted carousel ended all those years ago. Not that the kids would get infections by cutting themselves or anything, it was that the Grayson and Lloyd descendants were hanging out together. Sometimes the families could get along for the common good. Sometimes they couldn't. One jab or biting remark here or there, and the delicate truce would shatter, and they would all have to start from scratch once again.

The rain was still light enough to not be particularly bothersome. Nevertheless, Bessie held on and led Jerome to an unmanned maintenance trailer. This one had a plum and red striped awning they could duck under for a little bit.

Despite the sunlight's struggle through the grey clouds, it was much better lit outside than it was inside the tent, which came through even more filtered. Jerome's phenomenally red hair brought a shock of color against the drab enshrouding them.

"Can I see it one more time?" Bessie asked, putting the Grayson/Lloyd feud behind them.

Jerome didn't even protest her request. He craned sidelong, displaying his right eye openly. Bessie held his chin with as delicate a touch as she could, as if she were capable of causing more harm.

She winced. "Does your mom know about this?" She let go.

Jerome shook his head. "Nah," he said, unconcerned. "She probably doesn't even remember. She was passed out when it happened and has been sleeping it off on the couch all night. Was still there this morning." He stilled and then blinked. He slipped his hands into his pockets, now looking at anything but Bessie. "I'm-I'm sorry, I shouldn't have said that."

Probably Haly's worst kept secret was that Ms. Valeska tended to indulge in a little bit of drink from time to time. Not necessarily to the point where it became an overwhelming need or a health concern, but when she had occasion to drink, she took advantage. A circulating rumour around the circus was that her favorite gift, besides jewelry, was a bottle of sherry. Evidently she'd gone overboard with her gentleman friend last night.

Jerome still loved his mother despite everything, though, and in a way, Bessie's heart felt a little warmer. For his sake. He was a good kid. He was protecting his mother from the public shame.

Ms. Valeska wasn't always easy to get along with, and Bessie actually knew this from experience. She particularly remembered one moment where she was visiting the Valeska caravan for a playdate with Jerome, back when they were nine or so. Apparently the two of them had been making a terrible racket.

"For God's sake, knock it off!" Lila's voice held so much power behind it that it reverberated off the non-echo capable walls. The children's laughter didn't die out, it was stopped dead. Jerome instantly clammed up, sheepishly facing the ground and shrinking into his collar. Bessie felt like she was on the verge of tears.

Not all memories of Ms. Valeska were bad, though, to the woman's credit. For example, sometimes Lila had a habit of cupping Bessie's face giddishly, sweeping the young girl's cheeks with her thumbs.

"Oh, you tiny little thing, you," Lila would gush. "I wish I could put you in my music box!"

Bessie liked when those moods struck.

The Valeskas may have been dysfunctional and far from standard, but they loved each other. It was just mother and son, and that's all they had. Jerome would not hear of a word against her. Sometimes, in private, he would fleetingly lament his lack of a father to Bessie, but he wouldn't dwell nor release any depth beyond a few words. And as always, she never dug where she wasn't invited.

Lila could show affection to her son in many ways, Bessie never really once doubted that his mother loved him. Last night's unfortunate events, however, coming together as they did, filled her with terrible remorse. No one was there to stop it. If Bessie had only waited longer with him on the carousel, would Lila's visitor have gone home and Jerome would have remained unbruised? If she had just invited him over for some of Mrs. Struna's homemade pink lemonade before the journey to Gotham, could Jerome have avoided something so undeserved?

"You still want that ice pack?" Bessie offered.

Jerome almost looked guilty to accept. He shoved his hands deeper into his pockets. "Yes, please," he said. "Thanks, Bess."

* * *

 **A/N:** **6 Favorites and 8 Alerts, all for a first chapter?! You guys are much too kind!**


	3. A Little Heartbreak

By noon the rain was gone. However, the grey cloud cover stayed. Puddles shimmered from divots and grooves in the uneven ground. The refreshing scent left behind was calming.

Bessie emerged from her caravan, holding an ice pack in one hand and a beige cake square in the other.

"My mom made it," she explained, descending the steps, holding up the cake square. "It's a blondie."

"Blondie?"

"It's like a vanilla version of a brownie."

Jerome watched her hold it, a tad apprehensive, like he wasn't sure why Bessie had gotten one for him. Nevertheless, the look evaporated and he politely accepted. "Hm, now that doesn't sound so bad," he said.

Midway taking a bite, he also took the ice pack from Bessie's outstretched hand and pressed it to his discoloured eye. He inhaled deep through his nostrils and exhaled in relief. "Oh, that's good." He waggled his partially-bitten blondie at Bessie. "Both of them. Thanks, Bess."

Bessie nodded. Her smile gave the appearance of genuity, but it was weighted from the lingering sorrow she was still feeling over the incident.

Blinking, she was struck by a reminder. Her day's schedule resurfaced in her mind. She glanced at the plain white watch on her wrist that she borrowed from her mother. "Uh-oh. It's almost eleven. My ballet class is starting soon." She gave Jerome an apologetic look.

"Oh," said Jerome like he was imposing. He gave pause. "Um, okay," he said simply. He popped the rest of the blondie, chewing in contemplation. "Guess I should get going, too. Sheba needs to be fed."

"I'll see you later, then?"

Jerome nodded.

Just as they were parting ways and Bessie had turned to her caravan to go collect her ballet gear, Jerome spoke up behind her.

"If you're not busy or anything after, you can probably find me at my place. If you need me for anything."

"Sure."

They split off for the day.

Haly's employed a full-time ballet and gymnastics instructor on their payroll. Ballet training lended greatly to flexbility and poise, which were crucial, key components to Bessie's act.

* * *

She dropped off her backpack containing her ballet accessories at home, and headed in search of Jerome again. Hunting him down was straightforward, she found him exactly where he'd said he was going to be.

He was crouched in front of Sheba's encasement, talking to the snake sweetly as if she were capable of speaking back. Bessie slowed on approach, then stood back and leaned against a wooden string-light pole to watch.

"There you go, girl," Jerome murmured almost lullaby-like.

Whatever the task at hand, Bessie couldn't see it past him. She almost felt intrusive for interrupting. "You really love her, don't you?" she said, crossing her arms protectively, yet smiling. Despite her objections to all things snakey and slithery, the display of love and care was moving.

Jerome looked over his shoulder. Unfortunately, it was the side with his bad eye, breaking Bessie's heart all over again. "Hey!" he greeted brightly. "How'd your class go?" He faced Sheba again, but was listening intently.

"Same routine as usual. But it's good for keeping limber."

"I'll bet." Jerome rose from his crouch, checking his knees for mud or splashes. The ground was still muggy, but his corduroys came up clean.

They both shifted awkwardly, not quite sure where their conversation could possibly go from there. It just occured to Bessie that the past 24 hours was the most time she'd ever spent in Jerome's company in four months. It was also worthy of note that this was the first time she specifically sought him out within that frame, simply for the fact that she realized she missed him. In all honesty, she really did. She was just sorry it took separation to force her to realize it.

"Hey, you feeling hungry at all?" asked Jerome, beating Bessie to the responsibility. "It's about lunchtime, I think. Maybe Rossetti still has some chicken burgers left over from yesterday?"

"I think I can do that," Bessie said agreeably. She was up for an impromptu trip, and ballet training did work up her appetite a little bit.

One didn't have to lead the other, they both coordinated a path, cutting through the trailer maze as a shortcut.

Due to the mobile nature of Haly's Circus, naturally no structure was in the same place twice, but a regular pattern of the portable cafeteria was that it was usually parked on the outer edges, where it would be accessible to everyone. Some families preferred making dinner in their own tin homes, but the cafeteria was still around if some wanted to socialize, or just wanted a break from cooking that night. Everybody would volunteer every now and then, but the Rossetti family—made up of Mario, Rosela, and their two sons and one daughter—were mostly in charge. Jerome seemed to spend the majority of his meals there alone. Occassionally his mother would cook simple meals, and on other sporadic occassions they would eat in the cafeteria together, but usually Jerome would eat alone. He would take notice of other kids, watching them from across the room, but if he ever spoke to them, it was they who would initiate conversation.

Bessie recalled overhearing Mary say she tried to a couple weeks ago, but Jerome wasn't the most receptive conversationalist. Soon their back and forth had devolved into silent eating.

Bessie lunged over another mud puddle. The edge nearly sucked her into it's vortex and she double-stepped to catch herself, earning a friendly ribbing from Jerome for ironically losing her balance. She smiled tightly to mask the small rush of embarassment, but moreover she was at least pleased that his sense of humour wasn't soured from last night's violent incident.

Rounding a bend, the faint scent of smoking charcoal hovered in the air. It would have remained unremarkable had it not been for the stark contrast to what the weather left behind. Barbecue smoke was not foreign in a traveling circus basically akin to a campground. Bessie and Jerome weren't at all curious to find its source, but they did notice.

Turning another corner, knife-thrower Leo Baccardi's trailer loomed into view. The man himself was outside, tending to a small, portable, smoking grill. A fold-out TV tray beside him carried an open pack of hot dogs and a twist-tie bag of buns. The hot dog package's missing three were currently sizzling on his grill, each of which Leo periodically rotated with a pair of tongs. His slick, black hair, normally combed out of his eyes during a show, was more carefree today. A few loose strands swung over his eyes as he worked.

Leo glanced up, noticing the two from his peripheral upon their approach. "Hey, kids," he said brightly, "how you doing today?"

"Fine, Mr. Baccardi," said Jerome, nodding respectfully. Bessie smiled in greeting, clasping her hands behind her back as they both came to a stop in front of the grill.

Leo's grin faltered. "Good Lord, son, what happened to your eye?"

Jerome, as if having forgotten his appearance, suddenly focused the ground and bit his lip as though he could somehow hide the bruise. "Um. A cupboard," he mumbled.

"Cupboard?"

"Yeah. I swung it open, and, you know, didn't catch it, so, you know..." Palm vertical, he motioned it swinging into his eye. Slipping his hands into his pockets, he shrugged as if to say ' _what can you do?_ '.

Leo's eyes tightened and his lips parted, like he was having some difficulty understanding how that could happen. Bessie looked between them uncomfortably. Clearly Jerome wanted to keep the matter private, even though she agreed with Leo's concern. Just when she felt the need to change the subject for the sake of salvaging the moment, Leo concentrated on flipping another hot dog beginning to form grill stripes.

"Hoo, that thing must've come at you like a torpedo to look like that." But he said no more on it. "Hey, you kids hungry? Sit down, sit down!"

"We wouldn't want to impose—" began Jerome.

"Impose nothin'! It's lunchtime. Come."

Leo transfered the finished hot dogs to a paper plate, set them down on the TV tray, and swiftly entered his caravan. Bessie and Jerome exchanged a look. Bessie smiled assuringly and shrugged, silently communicating 'why not?'.

Some rustling clattered inside. The loose door swung back open and Leo returned with two worn lawn chairs. Snapping each one out for the kids, he returned to the grill and rustled the hot dog pack open to put on another few.

Bessie and Jerome thanked him and lowered into their seats.

Leo always boasted about being descended from proud, stubborn, Italian stock. But he was well-liked at Haly's. He had good stories, and more than enough charisma to tell them. Natural born showmen like him were so coveted by Mr. Haly.

"So did you guys hear about the fight between the Lloyds and Graysons again this morning?" asked Leo.

* * *

The hot dogs were long-gone, but their visit had just begun. Bessie and Jerome were tough customers when it came to keeping a conversation alive, due to their reserved natures. They could barely even keep one going on between themselves for long. However, Leo carried the lion's share of the talking—expected and certainly welcome, given Leo's ability to spin a good yarn and pull amusing anecdotes from his storied life of thirty-one years so far. Their long-drawn conversation was an enjoyable way to spend an hour or two. Truth be told, Bessie was engaged throughout and _wanted_ to be silent so that she would be more receptive to listening.

When the two o'clock hour rolled in from the crawl of the long-hand in her watch, she was reluctant to leave. But her act two days hence could suffer if she didn't.

A brief pause came about and she took the opportunity to wedge herself in. "I'm very sorry, Mr. Baccardi," she said quietly, like leaving would hurt his feelings if she didn't break the news gently. She didn't even stand, and wouldn't until she was at least cleared for a dismissal. She didn't want to give off the impression that she was making some sort of hurried excuse. "I need to get my rehearsal in for the show."

"Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah!" Leo's chair squeaked as he leaned back and waved off her concern breezily. As he himself was a performer, he would be one to understand. "I been talking too much again. You kids probably got a lot of things to do today."

"Thank you very much for lunch, Mr. Baccardi," said Jerome, standing.

Leo rose to see them off. "Always. I love having people over." He clapped Jerome on the shoulder, pointing. "And son, get a warm towel over that eye. Good for the circulation."

Jerome nodded. "Will do, Mr. Baccardi."

Bessie waved goodbye, already walking backwards.

"Hey, I expect you both back for supper!" called Leo to her retreating back. "I'm making burgers. Tell your parents."

"Yes, sir," Bessie answered before she disappeared around the corner of another trailer.

She made a quick pit stop to her caravan to grab her tightrope shoes, quickly let her parents know where she'd be for supper that night, and headed to the practice tent for the second time that day. First days in a new city were particular anomalies. That was when all the critics came out. It was always best to be in tip-top shape opening night, lest the reviews for the rest of the duration say your performance was satisfying, but without sparkle. Mr. Haly wasn't very fond of those.

* * *

 _Plop_

 _Splat_

 _Fluhpoom_

Bessie winced, looking up at the line of black floss that was her wire for what must have been the thirtieth time that hour. The backflip was not coming together at all. The fact was, though, that she should have been practicing her routine and not something unrelated to it, but the last hour had been a game of _One More, One More._ Her backside was feeling the dull ache she knew so well from a lifetime of falls.

Stairs, one, two, three. Cross the cable with light, sweeping footwork. Level out. Lower just a little bit for enough propulsion power in the legs. Missed. Repeat.

That story stayed the same for the next span where she entered a timeless zone that made her watch nothing more than a bracelet with gears.

A break was long overdue. Tightrope walking wasn't normally a sweaty endeavour, yet the edge of her hairline was damp and sticking to her scalp. Draping an arm over the wire for resting position, she exhaled methodically and tapped a finger over her hip, giving herself some time to unwind and recover from what must have been a couple hours of concentrated focus.

Standing there was doing nothing for her, though. Returning to the stairs, she walked back onto the cable, lowered, and sat on the wire, legs astride, swinging her feet like it would get some mental momentum going and shake out expired energy. Maybe the problem was all about her inability to line up correctly. Maybe her depth perception was off. Maybe Jerome was—Jerome?

He was approaching from thirty feet away. Bessie straightened. Surely Leo wasn't expecting them to supper just yet, it was only mid-afternoon. At the last second, just when she was about to greet him, her voice was corked when she noticed something very different from this morning.

Eventually Jerome reached her, but that wasn't even enough time for Bessie to stop staring. His black eye was mysteriously gone. She sat on the line, only muscle memory keeping her balanced. She was too busy trying to work out Jerome's miraculous healing prowess.

"What do you think?" he said cheerfully, pointing at the spot, knowing full well it would be the first thing she noticed.

The injury wasn't so dire that the area had swelled. All that needed to be covered was the discoloration and he looked absolutely fine. No mysterious bumps rippled the skin to reveal his secret.

"Oksana noticed," Jerome explained. Oksana Yakusheva was a six-foot-tall Russian blonde and the circus's key make-up artist. "She took me to the make-up trailer and dabbed some stuff on. Whatever it is, it works real good, doesn't it?"

Bessie swung a leg over and hopped down in front of him. "It's...wow," she said, practically speechless. Inching closer for a clearer view, but still within respectable boundaries—she didn't want her gawking to make him uncomfortable—the black eye was indeed near undetectable.

"Wow," she said again, taking a step back.

"Just wanted to show you," he said. He did seem quite pleased with the result, and thus, so became Bessie. Nothing could hide the sobering fact to her, though, that somebody out there had the brutishness to hurt someone as harmless as Jerome Valeska.

"It's a good job," said Bessie supportively. "I can't even tell." Oksana was undoubtedly a miracle-maker when given a soft-brush and a face.

"So what are you working on now?" asked Jerome conversationally, giving the tightwire at his side a look.

"Oh, you know," Bessie said, tugging the line, "just getting my rehearsal in. Was there anything else you were planning on today?"

Jerome wrinkled his nose as he shook his head. "No, not really. Got nothing to do at the moment. Mom went off. Sheba's sleeping."

"So you've got nothing to do?"

"I dunno," he said with a shrug. He couldn't take his eyes off the tightwire beside him. "Can I watch you instead?"

Bessie paused to consider what that would entail for him. "Are you sure?" she said uneasily. "I don't know how exciting it will be, I mean, it's not a dress rehearsal or anything. I'm gonna look crooked and out of sync. I've got nothing to wow you."

"Doesn't matter to me."

There was really nothing else Bessie could do to stop him. "Then yeah, sure. If you really want to and won't think it's boring."

Sold-out stadium stands versus a sole watcher was a strange phenomenon to Bessie—she tended to get bashful when in audience with the latter. One would think it should have been the other way around.

She didn't even attempt to continue tuning the backflip. Failing to land it was enough embarrassment for one day.

* * *

Jerome had added a woolly, slate grey cardigan to his wardrobe to ward off what little was left of the inoffensively cooled air outside. Bessie had grabbed a black cashmere button-up that would at least protect her arms from mosquitos.

The golden hour, where sunlight sank into a softer, warmer pre-sunset phase, arrived. The faint sound of sizzling patties carried past the first cricket chirps. Leo Baccardi was already at work when they showed up to his trailer.

"Hey, kids!" he said, waving them over with his tongs. An open cooler filled with ice and glass bottle drinks sat against his caravan. Their lawn chairs from earlier that day were already set up, waiting for them.

Bessie reveled privately in how nice it was to be extended an invitation somewhere. Not that her family, blood or circus, necessarily neglected her or her feelings, but it was always a nice feeling to be wanted. She was sure Jerome felt the same way.

Sunset began it's countdown by the time they'd bitten into their savoury first burgers. However, no sooner had they taken their second bites before Clarence Humboldt, the Ringmaster, arrived from out of nowhere.

"Leo, my boy!" he called in his rich voice. He was dressed rather smartly for a day off; black slacks, a belt, black leather shoes, and a tucked, white button-up shirt. He seemed to be going for a more relaxed look, though, as he wore no tie and the top two buttons were undone.

"Don't tell me," said Leo, shutting his eyes. "Is it a Lloyd and a Grayson again?"

Clarence stopped inside their circle. He dropped his bouncy demeanor now that his ruse was discovered and smiled apologetically. "Ah, so you guessed it. 'Fraid so. You're getting better at this."

"Well, maybe if you started opening with that line any other time instead of just coming to help break up a fight..." Leo added as a suggestion.

Leo and Clarence had clearly done this before, it was not each other they were irked with, they were on good terms. This wasn't the first time they had to assist as a mediator—or in extreme cases, act as an extra body to hold someone back.

Bessie had stopped eating, looking between the two adults. Fights between the Lloyds and Graysons were certainly expected occasionally at Haly's, and surprisingly, they didn't happen terribly frequently, but that didn't make breaking them up any more fun to deal with. Tension between both the feuding families did seem elevated these last few days, however. Nothing was subtle about it.

"It's that horse again, isn't it?" said Leo, rubbing his eyes.

Clarence chuckled, shaking his head, but the humour was dead on arrival. "That damn horse," he confirmed. "Hey, kids," he added, waving to them.

Bessie and Jerome both returned it, albeit with reservation given the nature of the visit. Despite Jerome and Bessie not being children in age anymore, some habits were hard to break with the adults. They'd always be the 'kids'.

Leo sighed and set his plate onto the TV tray beside him. "Well," he said with finality, clapping his hands on his knees, "let's get this done." He rose and gave Jerome and Bessie an apologetic look. "Sorry, guys. Looks like we gotta take care of this one. You two can stay here if you want, but I totally suggest you go watch them setting up the Big Top. You can go inside, they're just putting up all the equipment and seats. Take the chairs with you, get a good view. Sorry we gotta cut this short tonight."

"That's okay, Mr. Baccardi," said Jerome reassuringly. "We'll be fine, I think."

Bessie nodded her agreement.

"Excellent, excellent," said Leo, winking at Bessie and patting Jerome's shoulder as a promise that he'd be back soon.

"So what are we dealing with?" Leo asked Clarence as they both walked away.

"So get this, Owen tackles Gustavo, puts a dent in Ollie's trailer. George witnesses it all, comes in to help his nephew and soon Lloyds and Graysons are spilling through the cracks! Now that I think of it, Owen mentioned Lila again somewhere in there, too."

"No kidding..."

Their voices got fainter and fainter, and soon the cricket chirps absorbed them whole. Bessie just hoped Jerome didn't hear the fading mention of his mother's name and that the breeze carried it away.

A small pocket of silence endured where they both fidgeted for a little bit in preparation. Jerome looked to Bessie. "Shall we?" he said, tipping his head towards the Big Top.

Gathering their paper plates in one hand, they folded their chairs and carried them under the other arm.

Dusk was descending. The Big Top's candy cane stripe exterior could be seen from every angle of the fairground, no matter where you were. The entrance was wide open, a beckon to come inside.

Leo was right about the mantling progress. The Grayson trapeze was already set up, looming high above spectators, looking as though it was propping up the entire tent. Bessie's lofty tightrope was also up there, overshadowed for how minimalistic it was in comparison. Not all of the audience bleachers circling the center ring were set up yet. A team of fifteen workers in hard hats were already at work setting up the seating sections on the far right. All of the floodlights were left on for them to work late into the evening.

Even with all the equipment acting as the skeletal bones within the tent's body, the Big Top still looked naked without the humming life of a hundred and more audience members, or some act filling the ring. People were the circulating blood that kept Haly's going, and besides dress rehearsals, it was a curious oddity to see the interior nearly empty.

Jerome and Bessie were at a safe enough distance where they were and seated themselves at the head of the stands beside the tent's mouth. The warm light ahead of them, and the cooling night air at their backs felt pleasant, like a relaxing end to a late-summer's day, despite the season being autumn.

Jerome craned his neck, looking up into the canopy. "That's gotta be what? Twenty-five feet?" he said.

Bessie looked as well, following his eyeline. She roved the ceiling, puzzled, rolling the question again over her lips. She suddenly discovered what he meant. "Oh. More or less, yes." He was talking about the tightrope.

"Harder than it looks, I bet."

"It's not easy," she admitted, "but it is satisfying."

"That's some pretty tight control you must have up there."

Bessie felt humbled. She couldn't even look him in the eye. "Thank you," she said, feeling her bashfulness rise. She was certainly no overnight sensation. A lifetime of discipline built her up to this point, and it would do her well to keep it sharp. Time dulled all things, even that which seemed locked in. While Bessie had never fallen during a performance yet, there was still a lot of time and opportunity for it to happen.

They became entranced by the movement of the workers while digging into their supper. A hundred cricket symphonies just behind them became amplified as dusk dissolved to harken the blue hour.

Polishing off her burger, Bessie stole a look at Jerome beside her, and that was when she realized she was specifically on his rightside. He must have accidentally brushed a sleeve over the vicinity of his eye, because a peek of smeared purple dotted his cheekbone.

He noticed her staring before she could look away. "What?" he said curiously.

She was caught. Guilted into confession, she crumbled and gave voice to her thoughts. "It's just...you getting punched in the eye is still eating me up inside."

"What, that old thing?" He bumped her shoulder playfully with his own. "Aw, come on now, don't be all glum on my account. It's over. What's done is done." He looked out into the center ring and sighed through his nose. "Best thing we can do is move on, huh?"

"I guess so," said Bessie, but she didn't sound very convinced.

Jerome smiled softly in appreciation. Just when he looked like he was about to add, by chance John Grayson and Mary Lloyd passed by them, holding hands and laughing breathlessly over what must have been some sort of private joke. Obviously they had made up from earlier that day and weren't a part of this evening's skirmish between their families. They also didn't seem to notice Bessie and Jerome as they fluttered past.

Jerome noted how silent Bessie became beside him. She had gone quiet, her eyes following the two.

Mary and John crossed the center ring to the tent's opposite end. They were small and inaudible from that distance, but were still well within sight. John's hands slid to Mary's waist. In response, Mary wrapped her arms around his neck, her smile brilliant. Her face disappeared as John leaned down for a kiss, and then, Bessie made her first move since they showed up—her chest deflated in a shuddery, mute exhale. It sounded like a breath of wind that could have easily entered the tent from the wide open entrance behind them, and could have even been hidden by it. The sight come sound of John, Mary, and Bessie were almost simultaneous.

"Excuse me for just a minute," Bessie said steadily. She stood up and set her empty paper plate on her vacated chair. If anyone didn't know any better, the two events would seem completely unconnected.

Bessie turned away just in time before an ugly grimace twisted her mouth. The quiet, soprano sob escaped her chest before she could even think to stop it. She ambled away before Jerome caught on.

Once Bessie was outside, she turned right sharply, standing at the edge of the entrance, out of sight. The evening's lovely nighttime glow went ignored. Holding the tent's siding for balance with one hand, she shielded her mouth to keep herself together, but even against her palm she felt the wrinkle and contortion of her lips. Not even the pressure could pacify the freeze in her chest. A sob shook her.

In terms of devastation, her crying was not akin to an out-of-control forest fire. Her sadness was rather one of great defeat. An acceptance, but a heartbreaking event all the same to admit it. Seeing John and Mary together was a confirmation. Itchy tears dragged themselves down over her skin, smearing her cheeks.

"Bess?" said a tentative voice behind her.

She didn't think she'd been crying loudly at all. In fact, she'd been trying mightily to be as discreet as she possibly could. A mousy voice was good for moments like this. But then again, she knew Jerome wasn't stupid. He had ears and eyes that worked perfectly well.

Blinking furiously to at least clear _some_ of the proof and lessen the severity of how she must have looked, Bessie tugged down her button-up, crossed her arms, cleared her throat, and turned around, pulling herself together. "H-Hey," she said thickly. Who was anybody kidding, she knew she looked guilty. Even if she couldn't see her own eyes, they must have been as blazing as Jerome's hair.

Jerome slipped his hands into his pockets. He appeared aloof as he shifted from foot to foot, but he was trying to tactfully plan his next words. "It's about John, isn't it?" he said knowingly, but as soft as lamb's wool.

Bessie dragged her thumb across both cheekbones. "No, no," she said dismissively, but her globby sniffle interrupted and gave her away. She leaned against the tent's sturdy canvas wall. "No, it's nothing. I was reminded of something, but it's not important."

Bessie's young—some would even say misguided—crush on John Grayson was not well-known around the circus, but some select members could recall it as an old memory. She had hoped it faded from most minds, she thought she hid it well over the ensuing years. Clearly Jerome was not fooled, especially by her reaction to a simple kiss between John and who Bessie knew was his girlfriend. Bessie knew that all too well.

Jerome cast his gaze at the dirt underfoot. "I see, I see," he said patiently, nodding.

Bessie would be the first to admit that maybe she was rather oversensitive, and she was teased enough times in her childhood for crying over _Zobno Miško_ to become embarrassed whenever she cried in front of the other kids. She wished Jerome wasn't seeing her like this. Not only was it terribly awkward, it was a bad end to an otherwise pleasant day they spent mostly together. She just had to make it about herself at the last minute, didn't she.

John and Mary being a couple wasn't breaking news. Bessie's heart already shattered mostly from the first time she heard John was dating Mary. That was maybe a year and a half ago. Tonight's display had only attacked an already numbed crush. Or so she thought. The two bickered so much, and were so off and on that Bessie thought that maybe...well, obviously that wasn't going to happen now, was it?

Mary was never an enemy or competition. She could be sassy, but never bullying, never cruel, and never mean-spirited to Bessie. In fact, Mary was a better match for John than Bessie knew she could ever be. And somehow that only added to the pain.

Jerome did not pry for the details he knew little of. And Bessie was exceedingly grateful. She wasn't ready for this part of growing up, this unavoidable, up-and-coming stretch in her life where heartbreak would become crushing reality. Talking about it just seemed like an invitation to invite more misery in, and Jerome looked uneasy in this situation as it was. She couldn't put him on the spot like that. It was her problem, not his.

"I'm fine," Bessie said, putting on her best smile. She sniffed again, poking a finger through her sleeve to dry her eyes more thoroughly and for good. "Thanks, Jerome." She wasn't sure what she was thanking him for exactly. Maybe just for the fact that he was simply there and wasn't adding to her humiliation.

Jerome, meanwhile, concentrated hard on the ground, pressing his lips so tight that they paled. Bessie waited him out so that she wouldn't interrupt whatever he seemed to be having difficulty with, watching with a careful eye.

Just when she was about to ask if he had something to say, Jerome stepped up and embraced her.

The move stunned Bessie. Her hands floated behind his back uselessly, fingers stiffening. His hold wasn't lung-constraining, but it was firm and encapsulating. Needy.

Because of his height, his arms were wrapped over her shoulders, leaving his cheek to rest on the crown of her head. Yet the size difference did not seem to matter to him one bit.

Gradually, Bessie warmed—outside and in. The gesture was sudden, but it could never be unwanted. Giving in, she encircled her arms around him and tightened comfortingly, laying her head over his heart, the highest point she could reach. Gentle, therapeutic thumps beat steadily in her ear, and she wasn't sure whether they came from his heart or her own pulse. She tried to remember the last time they'd ever hugged and she could only recall the brief one he gave her for her eleventh birthday. They were a lot closer in height back then, too.

"Sometimes I feel like you're the only friend I have, Bess," said Jerome.

He smelled of fresh linen, staled from the outdoors but clean and airy. Like a lived-in home. It was a comforting sensation.

The hug even moreso.

"I'll always be your friend, Jerome," she replied. "You'll never have to worry about that." Her voice was quiet, but she said it with authenticity, to reassure him.

Jerome was the first to let go. Bessie wouldn't have dreamed of having been the one to do so, because maybe Jerome needed it more. When he released her, Bessie smiled tightly but genuinely, overcome.

"Come on," she beckoned, gesturing with her head towards the Big Top's entrance, "we should get back inside." Now that the sun was gone, a minor measure of chill had dropped the temperature outdoors. Even though the chill was tingling and raising goosebumps on small areas where her skin was exposed, her body felt lighter. Crying had released a clogged valve somewhere in her, and at least Jerome had been there to lift her spirits again.

Returning to their chairs, Bessie couldn't help but look out to where John and Mary had been. They were gone.

Bessie sighed to let the last of her intensity drain. A bigger rush of relief than she expected sent her heart pumping. "I'm sorry about what just happened," she said. "I kind of put a damper on the end of today."

Jerome brushed her worry off with a wave of his hand. "Not even close. This day was really nice. I feel like I haven't had one like this in a long time."

Bessie said nothing in response, she just handed him a napkin. When he looked confused over why she was offering, she told him, "You dropped a little mustard on your sweater."

"...Oh."

* * *

 **A/N: This story isn't dead! I've just been having a terrible, anxious few months at work, and thus it has zapped all of my motivation to write. But things are getting better for me and I'm getting some of that mojo back. It's still here and I will see it through!**


	4. Showtime

The construction workers jammed in the final seat, completing the jigsaw that was Haly's seating arena. Flood lights on Jerome and Bessie's side switched off minutes ago, leaving them in half darkness, only barely visible by the bled-in glow coming from the other end.

The late hour went unsaid between them, but they took the Big Top's completion as their retirement and they packed up their stuff, dumping their plates into an oil drum trash can situated just outside the entrance.

They walked home side-by-side in comfortable silence, letting the gentle crunch of dirt underfoot be the only sound. Bessie hugged her arms close, mostly to keep warm, but also maybe to stave off a bit of childhood fear leftover from her more imaginative years. Stationary objects just barely visible in the darkness looked as though they could give chase at any moment. Anything felt like it could stalk and ambush her from behind.

She steered just a little closer to Jerome and hustled just a smidgen to keep his pace. Not that she was convinced he'd be at all skilled in combat, but two people was always better than one.

The Struna caravan came up sooner than the Valeska one and they bid each other a good sleep. Bessie didn't go inside right away. One hand on the open door, she watched Jerome leave until the night and the caravan maze took him away. For safety's sake. It was always good to have someone watch over you.

* * *

The first thing Bessie thought of when she woke up was Jerome. Namely because she had fallen asleep in her clothing from the night before, just a bit too bushed to bother even removing little besides her shoes. Now within the cramped confines of her home, the charcoal smell her clothes absorbed from Leo's barbecue was thick and encapsulating.

She sat up on her sofa bed, the bed sheet blanket tangled at her socked feet. Her parents appeared to be out and about working, as it looked very much like she had the whole trailer to herself. Her eyelids were tight, blinking rapidly from the early sunlight peeking through the curtained windows. She continued to sit there, staring at nothing until her senses woke up with her.

Jerome really was a nice kid, she mused, remembering what he did. She felt like she should do something nice for him, too, as recompense to let him see how much she appreciated his interlude last night, as embarrassing as it was for her.

A concentrated strike of hurt throbbed in her heart. The crisp memory of John kissing Mary would not relent, playing on a loop in her mind. She shut her eyes, deflating. At least this time over it took a little less time to accept. The hints were always there, but her naive heart manufactured so much false hope that she almost believed she might have had a chance. She took a steadying breath through her nose to push the feeling down. Far down into a sealed well where the feeling could be numbed.

Jerome, however, deserved something.

Standing and arching her back to stretch out the constriction of sleepy muscles and bones, Bessie let the blood flow ignite her and she kicked off her morning routine, pulling together her clothes for the day—relaxed banana-yellow pants with a pair of black leggings underneath for when she practiced her set later, and a grey t-shirt—and went looking in the cupboards for her mother's blondie recipe.

Following an hour and a half of slow-going to read, re-read, and re-read again to make sure the blondies turned out alright, she pulled them out of the oven and placed them on the counter. Slipping the oven mitts off, she leaned over, inpsecting the cakey, baked cracks on the surface scrutinizingly. The warm, wafting toffee smell was promising, but nothing was certain until the first bite.

Bessie could get by with baking, but it was her mother who truly held the power with a wooden spoon and a mixing bowl. Kitchen tools may as well have been wands for Magda Struna. In her mother's abesence, though, she had to make due with her own meager talents.

Bessie's quick, little "Ow!" was heard by no one. She had attempted to pinch off just a bit for a taste test, but the heat bit her finger and left an itchy sting, even after she fanned and splashed it under the tap for a few seconds. Leaving it on the counter to cool further while she got in an hour or two of practice was the next productive thing to do.

Shutting her caravan door behind her, she headed for the tent.

The weather was improving. Clouds still appeared smoky-grey and thick, but they were breaking and dispersing. The sun was out and shining for now, but an enormous, fat cloud seemed to be floating closer, intent on blinding it for a few minutes before it moved on.

Bessie had completed half of her short journey when she passed someone she hadn't expected to run into. Lila. The woman was standing there, alone and leaning against a light pole, delicately smoking a cigarette.

Lila seemed to just be unable to hide the bags under her eyes. Nevertheless, when she noticed Bessie coming through, she dragged her fingers under the girl's chin in passing, smiling. "Good morning, darling," she said. The sparkle in her voice was back.

"Hello, Ms. Valeska," Bessie replied amiably. "I'm sorry I can't stay. Very busy day."

"Of course, the show tonight. Take care, darling."

Bessie twisted to wave, then continued on her way. She wondered briefly if Ms. Valeska was yet aware of her son's injury. She hoped so, and hoped even more that the guest who had done it was not welcome anymore.

No backflip failures were scheduled for today, Bessie had to put that aside and actually rehearse her full routine this time, down to the second.

Following an hour's session, she felt the blondies were plenty cool by this point. Leaving her black, form-fitting wire walking outfit on—she was going to return anyway—she went back home to collect the treats, covering them in tupperware. The Valeska caravan wasn't on her way to training, but she could make time for a brief detour. A special delivery was a good enough occassion to.

She wasn't quite sure where Jerome would be exactly, there were many possibilities to his whereabouts, but his own doorstep seemed to be the most promising initial starting point. If not, she'd just have to take a little effort to ask around.

She carried herself with a little bounce on the way. Personally, she felt really good about their recent bonding, like it was beginning anew.

No, not quite anew.

Perhaps it was more like a freshening; a dulled, aged marble buffed to be shiny and new.

Haly's Circus was full of life and people, there was no doubt. It was difficult to avoid running into anybody, and for the second time that day, Bessie met with another familiar face on the way to her destination.

Mr. Paul Cicero.

The old man was doing nothing, merely sitting on the steps to his trailer, aimlessly staring ahead at nothing. This wasn't an odd occurrence, given that the man was blind.

Bessie wanted to enjoy his company more. He was a nice man, really he was, but his predictions tended to be quite doom-ridden, and it seemed as though the old man was fuzzy on when and where appropriate times to announce them should be set. Discomfort seemed to follow closely alongside his arrival.

Being confronted with one's own potential demise had that effect.

Bessie learned long ago that sneaking away was useless. The man never missed a beat, he heard and smelled everything. Mr. Cicero's milky eyes were usually rolled into his head in a constant up-stare, but he didn't need working eyes to see Bessie. Tendons and muscles in his neck seemed to contract of their own accord, the poor man always seemed to be in some state of mild spasm—due to advanced age, most likely.

"Watch yourself, young lady," Mr. Cicero warned in his dusty croak of a voice, hands piled overtop the varnished crook of his cane. He sounded like the hollow creak of a floorboard.

Bessie slowed as if she'd just been admonished for running in the house. John always said that Mr. Cicero was becoming senile in his old age and that it was best to take his cryptic advice in stride, but Bessie couldn't help but always think at length over what on earth Mr. Cicero could have meant. Mr. Cicero didn't simply talk, he intoned in a grave manner, as if what he was saying was beneficial to your continued survival. Whether his words had enigmatic meaning or only meaning to himself was difficult to decide.

Nevertheless, Bessie had to concede that he was ultimately harmless, and she didn't _entirely_ abhor his company. On a good day she could sit and have lunch with him. His eccentricities, however, put just enough fear in her to always give her utmost respect and manners. There were certain conversational subjects she learned over the years to absolutely avoid. Surprisingly, the weather was one of them.

"Yes, Mr. Cicero," she said meekly in passing, dialing down her pace for how much she felt like she was caught instigating some minor mischief.

Even when she was sure Mr. Cicero was long out of earshot, she kept her footsteps light, sweeping, and floaty, all the way to the Valeska's home.

Bessie rapped her knuckles on the door, keeping an ear close to the metal casing for movement signifying whether somebody was home. She gripped the tupperware bracingly in preparation.

No answer.

Bessie waited another few beats, just in case, even though she didn't hear any telltale clattering within the trailer. Given the limited space, too, answering a knock wasn't a time-consuming expedition.

Nobody.

She tentatively knocked again and shifted to look more proper. "Jerome?" she called. "Ms. Valeska?"

A bird perched on top of the caravan tweeted, the only sound that answered Bessie. She stayed a couple seconds more, leaning her ear closer.

By the look and sound of things, it appeared neither Valeska was home. Bessie shifted her fingers over the tupperware, disappointed. Just as she was about to turn down the short flight of stairs, a muffled voice seemed to come from beyond the metal door.

"Bess?"

She straightened. "Jerome? Hi. Um, I-I was just wandering around and I thought I could leave you some blondies. You know, like the one from yesterday."

Footsteps came closer. Bessie prepared herself to greet him in person, but the door never opened.

"Sorry, Bess," he said, voice a little stronger now that proximity was closer. "I really appreciate it, but I'm feeling kind of down right now."

"Down?" she repeated. "Is something wrong? It wasn't something that happened last night, was it?" For a depressing moment she wondered if it was anything she could have possibly done. Did he actually hear Leo and Clarence mentioning his mom and the fight, afterall? Was the incident over the black eye affecting him more than he let on?

"No, just...sick, I think. Under the weather."

"Oh." Bessie bit her bottom lip, a little crestfallen. "I see."

It felt kind of nice yesterday to have a likeminded buddy to hang around with all day. It had been a nice change from the norm. To be honest, she was kind of looking forward to a part two today.

"You can leave the blondies on the doorstep," he said, although sweetly and maybe even a little apologetic. "I'm sure they're wonderful, just like the one you gave me yesterday. That's awful nice of you, Bess."

"Sure. Okay," Bessie said optimistically for his sake. "Well, I really hope you feel better soon."

"If the blondies are as good as the one from yesterday, I know I will. And Bess?"

"Yes?"

"I really do appreciate it."

Despite the disappointment, Bessie's heart warmed. "Anytime," she said. "I...I guess I'll see you later then?"

"Absolutely."

"Okay. I'll just leave these on your doorstep, alright?" Stooping, she placed the tupperware on the top step just under the door—caravan doors opened outward, which would knock the contents off the stairs if placed near the frame.

Thoughts of him didn't leave her concerned mind for the rest of the day.

* * *

Luck was on Gotham's side the next day. Her circus debut fell on a clear, cloudless day. The air had a hint of autumn bite to it, but Haly's Circus tent was well-equipped with indoor-heating.

Bessie sat still in the elevated chair, eyes obediently shut, as Oksana Yakusheva delicately blotted on the finishing touches of her look.

Bessie's stage make-up was like a dainty, curious doll brought to life. Her face was thickly powdered to appear whiter. Only a dash of red lipstick in the center of her cupid's bow and a strip down the bottom lip to mirror the top was added, leaving the corners to be blended into the white. The effect was meant to make her lips appear more youthful, rounder, and poutier.

Black lines, like rays of the sun, were painted above and below her eyes for a theatrical appearance of eyelashes—never fake lashes.

Oksana applied one last waxy dab of lipstick onto Bessie's bottom lip. "Done," she said in her deep Russian accent, pleased with the result. "What you think?"

Bessie barely glanced in the mirror, she didn't need to scrutinize a thing. Oksana's work was always that of a professional. She beamed. "Mm-hm. Thank you, Oksana."

A tinny knock at the trailer's metallic door interrupted them. They both looked in it's direction. Lester Pearson, the sideshow runner, opened the door, leaning his shiny, bald head inside, searching the trailer. "Is Lila here?" he asked.

"Lila?" Oksana was wiping her hands on a washcloth by the sink. "No. She has not been here today. I wait almost one hour now and I think she is not coming."

Lila being absent from the sideshow wasn't a shocking turn of events. She wasn't prone to, but it wasn't out of character for her to skip her snake-dancing routine once or twice on occasion. A night spent with the bottle sometimes rendered her just too headache-ridden to perform, among some other select vices.

Lester looked at Bessie next, question still hanging in the air.

"I saw her earlier this morning, but I don't know where she is now," offered Bessie, shrugging in apology.

Lester nodded, looking a little miffed, but obviously keeping it to himself. He grumbled something under his breath and closed the door behind him.

Oksana and Bessie exchanged looks. Oksana just smirked and shrugged. "Uh oh, somebody is in trouble," she said mischievously as she returned to the chair, untied the smock Bessie wore to catch loose make-up dust, and released the chair's hydraulic to lower her. " _U_ _dachi_ _, lapushka,_ " she added sweetly, patting Bessie's cheek. The high-grade make-up was designed to withstand sweat, moisture, and wear, leaving it unsmeared as if it had never been touched.

Rising from her chair, Bessie's skirted, lavender tutu's airy hem fell, brushing her thighs. Footed tights of checkered seafoam green and lavender stretched down to her feet. Her top, consisting of the same pattern, was a fitted button-front with a high neck, with white sheer-mesh sleeves ending in lace cuffs. Neck-trim made of black lace, emerging from the high collar like webbing, traveled clear up to her chin. All of it was clingy clothing, nothing flowy, nothing loose.

Her brown hair was gathered tight and piled atop her head into a large, webby puff, away from her eyes. Loose ends were secured so as not to dangle too much. At only ear-length when down, however, her hair was really too short to worry about gravity pushing the ends into her eyes.

Costume. Hair. Make-up. Showtime.

Leaving the make-up trailer and entering the bluish outdoors, Bessie crossed the short distance to the striped Big Top. She did not, however, enter through the main entrance. That was for audiences only. A stage entrance on the rightside was strictly reserved for performers.

She swept the tarp flap aside, meeting with soft light courtesy of lightbulbs strung along wires between poles, identical to the ones outside. The stage entrance opened to a small waiting area for the performers to bide their time until their cues. Next door was a larger opening reserved for easy access and exits of equipment, attendants, and animals.

In most typical settings, Bessie's full ensemble would have stood out like a lantern in a blackout, and she would have felt terribly self-conscious if she were, say, walking through a bustling city sidewalk. But at Haly's everybody was swathed in splashes of brilliant color and loud patterns. Therefore, Bessie could only feel right at home in her costume, where people wouldn't look twice at her. In fact, most of the other costumes were even more elaborate and patterned than hers. Leo Baccardi was really the only performer who appeared normal in comparison. His attire consisted of a top hat and a suave three-piece suit complete with tails.

Two well-used, brown suede sofas were provided for seating, and a row of three vanity tables lined by lightbulb frame mirrors were provided for additional tweaks or touches.

A black curtain blocked the tunnel leading to the heart of Haly's Circus, but cloth could not conceal sound. The hum and drone of an audience beyond the curtain was a familiar sound, and tonight the Circus sounded like it was full to capacity. Mr. Haly would no doubt be pleased. Word spread quickly in Gotham it seemed. The marketing team had done it's job well.

Bessie quietly brought herself inside. The usuals for the first half of the show were mostly present. Not a Grayson or Lloyd were in sight, though. This was a normal occurrence, they normally didn't show up in the waiting area until much later, as their acts were saved for Haly's big finale. Bessie was also a little relieved, if she could risk being honest. Public Grayson/Lloyd feuds tended to make her uncomfortable to witness. Others considered it a show within the show and got some entertainment out of it, but Bessie made it her mission to not find herself in the middle of it all and be forced to take sides.

Leo Baccardi was easy to spot, given he was the only person clad in mostly black. That and his huge bulls-eye wheel beside him, big enough to tie his Target Girl to. His mouth was set studiously as he held and tilted one of his throwing knives, lightly poking and testing the pointed tip with his finger. Satisfied, he placed it on the wheeled table next to him, nodding to the attendant his okay.

The attendant nodded back, then steered the table away while another took the target wheel. The wheel locks were in the upright position, giving the items freedom to roll. Portability was much preferred over dismantling and rebuilding time and time again. Before Leo launched his act in the center ring, however, he would personally inspect and confirm for himself that the wheels were firmly locked. His Target Girls would have very limited careers if Leo wasn't as safety-minded as he was.

The attendants disappeared beyond the curtain for further prepping of his equipment.

Left on his own, Leo started making rounds about the room, having a few laughs here and there and some fleeting exchanges. Eventually, he found his way over to Bessie's vicinity, looking down at her sitting on the couch.

"Sounds like a good crowd out there tonight, huh?" he said conversationally.

Bessie nodded in agreement, wishing she could say something to add to that. Effortless conversation was not her strong suit. Still, she made sure to look cheery to illustrate to Leo that she didn't mind him talking to her.

Leo had applied styling wax to his well-groomed moustache and goatee, shaping the ends into debonair, upward curls. His facial hair was usually only styled this way for shows. He didn't look quite as dramatic in casual circumstances. Nevertheless, he wore his tuxedo coattails very well, looking natural and handsome in it. The overall look brought him back to a more classic age. Haly's liked to employ an old-timey, Houdini-era style, like time had gone on without them. In their own way, every member reflected that aesthetic.

"You see Jerome today?" Leo asked, seating himself on the empty spot beside Bessie. "Did he do what I said with the warm towel trick?"

Bessie pressed her lips tensely. "No. I mean, no as in I haven't seen him today," she said, recalling her last encounter with Jerome yesterday.

It felt like too much to explain that she technically did talk to him, just never saw him. In the end, though, she was telling the truth, she did not _see_ him, and a few clipped exchanges didn't exactly merit an immersive encounter. She did not feel slighted for Jerome turning her away, he had a good reason, but considering the fun she'd had at the carousel and watching the Big Top rise, his melancholy mood dimmed her just a little bit, too. Hopefully his sickness would pass very soon.

An attendant with a clipboard motioned at Leo to come forward.

"That's me," Leo announced to Bessie. He patted her knee in farewell, and rose, straightening his prim coat. "See you later, kid."

And thus, Bessie was left again to ruminate in her own thoughts. Eventually, she listened in to conversations happening around her rather than being part of them. She would rather wait to be invited so as not to wedge herself in. Sometimes she preferred it this way. Flapping her mouth would leave no room to listen, and she enjoyed listening. She liked hearing details of lives others had lived. Even the seemingly mundane could bring color if the subject was something she'd never done before. Darryl, for example, was speaking to one of the clowns about how he'd love a seated lawnmower if he ever had a lawn to mow.

Bessie had never used a lawnmower before, and had never really witnessed one being used in person. Television was her only visual connection to such a thing. That was just another casualty of the mobile life and cramped settings—you never settled on a lawn long enough to mow it.

After Leo, The Strongwoman was up next. Herlinda was a beefy German woman in her late 30's with a stocky neck. Her costume didn't consist of much. It looked like a one-piece, black bathing suit with a boyleg cut. She never seemed to need much protection from the elements, cold temperatures could hardly pierce her hide. A body like hers seemingly ran on it's own energy source. Bessie couldn't recall a time she'd seen Herlinda wear anything thicker than a cashmere coat, not even during a New York winter.

Herlinda was standing beside the curtain. Her rosy face was emotionless due to her concentration on listening for her cue, thin lips pressed by her steely, pudgy jaw. Despite appearances, however, reality had something different in mind. Herlinda was truly as gentle and benevolent as a grandmother. Her fingers were thick, but never clumsy or rough. She used them with a feminine grace, despite what her image projected.

In fact, Herlinda chose to be very classically lady-like when not performing for an audience. During non-work hours she was rather fond of accessorizing her taste for fancy purses along with stylish tweed dress suits, and owned a rather impressive collection of both. Bessie could also recall fondly of the days when Herlinda let the circus children into her trailer for afternoon butter cookies and pink lemonade.

The Strongwoman didn't have to wait long for her signal. In under a minute she was beckoned forward by the attendant holding a clipboard and she departed through the curtain.

"Ladies and gentleman!" boomed a voice from none other than Haly's master of ceremonies, Clarence Humboldt. "Show of hands, who here has ever struggled with opening a stubborn pickle jar?" He paused, muttering numbers under his breath. "Ah, most of you, that's good. Trust me when I say our next performer has never had that problem. The only thing we ask is that you do not attempt to try what you're about to see at home. Stick to your pickle jars, eh?"

So as not to disrupt the flow of the show and cause long, awkward pauses in-between acts, each performer would already begin prepping whilst the prior performance was winding down. Haly's specifically designed it this way. If all went to plan and the audience's attention was drawn to where it needed to be, then there was a certain magic in having the next performer having seemingly appeared out of nowhere, save for a couple wandering eyes that would catch the transition.

Clarence talked up the audience in-between sets to allow them a minute or two to remember to breathe, and then ready themselves for the next act. Too much constant stimulation and they'd suffer from entertainment burnout. Too little and they would get bored and antsy. Haly's stage managers knew what they were doing. They sculpted their methods over the years, shaving them down to a near exact science.

Eventually, Bessie was called up and she vacated her seat.

Every spotlight stayed trained on Herlinda in the center ring, leaving Bessie cloaked in heavy shade to travel through the show floor relatively unnoticed.

She could feel her tutu swish with her step. Every so often she still got the childish indulgence to twirl in it. The whimsy was sometimes irresistible. Growing up was tough to accept, and she wasn't sure whether she was fully prepared to face it. She just hoped that when that leap from adolescent to adult officially came, she would remember to stop every now and then to just swish her skirt in the carefree way a child would while playing princess. She hoped she'd never be too old for that.

Gripping the cold metal bars of the attached simplistic ladder that led up to her starting platform above, Bessie began her ascent. Climbing the long ladder wasn't exactly a pleasure cruise, but she could do it with relative ease. Ironically, Bessie felt a lot more safer once she got to the top, thirty feet high. There was something more unsettling about being perpendicular to the ground. It made her feel more vulnerable if she slipped with nothing at her back. At least up at the top there was something to catch her underneath, even if it was a cable no more than a coin's width.

She hauled herself onto her starting platform of minimal reach. Three people would feel awfully crowded up there. Four people would start to huddle. And five would start sweating.

The Circus, though, would never be so cruel as to not install a couple safety railings for her convenience. Tightrope walking would be the only risky thing she'd be allowed to do. Mr. Haly even insisted on doubling the vertical bars that stabilized the rails, on the off-chance that Bessie could slip and fall through the spaces between. There was nothing he could do for the gaps which allowed for the tightrope entry and the ladder behind, however, and Mr. Haly was very nervous about that. Bessie had to promise she'd guard her steps lest she cause him a pulmonary malfunction. Mr. Haly risked a lot for that altered birth certificate, and Bessie was nothing if not a loyal soldier as a result.

She had wanted this job terribly, and her opportunity arose a year ago when the previous walkers, a husband and wife team, retired. The problem? Bessie was only sixteen at that time. It took months of coaxing, but eventually Mr. Haly had given in, despite all good sense telling him not to. He made a few phone calls to friends in high places, and with Mr. and Mrs. Struna's apprehensive permission, Bessie began her fledgling career in one of the world's riskiest stunts. If a government official started poking around then it was worrisome that her actual age would be discovered. Haly's would be held liable and could be fined, or worse, disbanded.

Herlinda continued warming the crowd with feats of strength that increased one after the other. Meanwhile, Bessie plucked a generous pinch of chalk dust from a small metal pail hanging on a hook driven directly into the structure post, dusting her hands. Chalk dust was handy for absorbing sweat, and kept her grip obedient. Beside the pail, another hook supported a uniformly wrapped, white lace parasol.

Gripping the rails on either side of her tight, making good on her promise to Mr. Haly about safety, she crouched, bending one knee for stability and sticking her other foot onto the wire. She pressed down, weighting it to test the tension. After a few stiff bounces, she was satisfied. Everything felt good.

Nothing to do now but wait out her turn. She lowered and sat cross-legged, looking down from her high perch to watch. Herlinda was in the middle of an impressive balancing act. Using a long wooden plank for leverage, she was currently balancing two full kegs. On her head.

A colorful band of clowns assisted. While they were meant to look funny and lighthearted to the audience, they were actually trained in many areas to help out a performer, whether with props, an extra hand, or even a malfunction. Improvised distractions were rare, but very necessary if the time came. Immersion was never broken. Once a ticket-holder crossed the tent's magical threshold, they were supposed to be in a bubble of fantasy, and nothing was allowed to pop it.

Two clowns stood on wooden fold-out ladders to remove the kegs—at the same time so they would not upset the see-saw balance—and lifted the board off Herlinda's head. Herlinda posed in a mighty stance by flexing her arms while the audience clapped. However, she was far from done. Bessie had seen this trick a hundred times before, yet the phantom pressure in her neck from simply witnessing it never went away.

The board was returned onto Herlinda's head. She spread her feet apart. Her pale blue eyes rolled into her head as she looked above, nudging the board with her hands just once to adjust it perfectly. Then, her arms lowered and she adopted a T-pose, the signal that she was ready. Climbing their ladders, the two clowns held hands at the peak for balance. Timing themselves perfectly, they each placed their outer foot on the board, leaning their weight on. Herlinda adjusted her configuration accordingly. After a small pause to make sure she was prepared, the clowns fully stepped aboard, wobbling minorly for a few seconds.

But they had done it. The found complete equilibrium and Herlinda was officially balancing two average-sized men on her head. Whoops and cheers rang.

Not that anybody could attest to witnessing it, but Bessie could easily believe that Herlinda had the muscle to break one's spine over her knee.

Keeping up their balancing act for an extension to accept their applause, the two clowns now began to work on coordinating on getting down. Meanwhile, a third clown arrived from the wings, carrying a mass in his arms that sort of resembled a black lifejacket. With the other's help, they all took a strap and helped wrap and cinch it over Herlinda.

A jaunty car horn honked, but no vehicle was in sight.

Not for long.

A little Classic Fiat 500 wheeled into the tent from the equipment tunnel, driven by another clown who was poking his head out the window and waving cartoonishly.

Herlinda's big finale had arrived.

Driven into position parallel to her, the engine disengaged and the little car became stationary. One clown hooked the attachment cable of her harness to an unseen anchor underneath the car's front bumper. Bessie noticed a low volume from the crowd. They were watching with bated breath.

Herlinda faced forward, the car tethered many feet behind her. She paused for a short extension, taking a few invigorating breaths, building up the anticipation of what she was about to do. With a sudden jerk forward, she leaned, tilting at so forward an angle that she appeared to be bending gravity to her will.

The car budged just by a miniscule inch. Herlinda exhaled bracingly, willing herself to keep going. Her skin blazed with an emerging red glow. She gnashed her teeth and dug her feet hard into the ground, creating the traction she needed.

Labouriously, as if trudging through tar, the tires finally began to roll. Herlinda took another step and made better progress than the last. Once the momentum got going, she picked up more pace. Gradually, she ended up dragging the car a total of thirty feet—the entire span of Haly Circus' floor space.

Nobody could see it, but Bessie was smiling down at Herlinda's achievement. Her gentle clapping was easily drowned out in the din following. Though she'd seen it a hundred times, pulling a car would always be an impressive feat.

The clowns unhooked the harness and Herlinda stepped out of it. She flexed her thick arms again, just in case anyone forgot what she was capable of, then crossed her ankles and bowed gracefully, repeating the motion many times in different directions as she accepted her applause.

The spotlight darted and rearranged itself, finding Clarence at the far left. The luminated circle followed him as he walked into the center ring, taking attention away from Herlinda, to which she then made her quiet exit to the rightside wings.

Clarence was about to enter into his introduction. Bessie rose to her feet in preparation.

"I think I need to start working out more," Clarence mused, flexing his own arm and poking the unimpressive bicep disappointedly, earning a chittering laugh from the crowd. He chuckled with them. "Sit tight, Gotham. Our special evening with you fine folk is just beginning. Without further ado, I am pleased to introduce our next performance. I hope none of you are scared of heights. Walking a path no more wider than the nickel sitting in your very own pocket, let's make some noise for Haly's very own Bessie 'Stratosphere' Strunaaa!"

* * *

 **A/N: Looks like work got a** _ **lot**_ **worse for me these last few months. Long story, but it was a dismal time, my stress levels were through the roof, I cried, I was** _ **so**_ **close to quitting! Naturally, this had drained all of my creativity. But things are now looking up, things are changing, and so far, they've been for the better. Hopefully this bodes well and my upload schedule will tighten a little more than as of late. I'm so sorry to leave readers hanging! I am committed to finishing this, I really am.**

 **Also, WUT?! Three chapters in and this has amassed 22 Favorites and 24 Follows?! That's just...incredible! I'm blown away! It is my hope that I can make every single one of those worth it.**

 **As always, Jerome, Lila, the Ringmaster, Mr. Cicero, Mary, and John exist in the show, but everyone else I have made up. Even the Ringmaster's name. He was never given a name in the show, but for the purposes of this story, he needed one. I think I took one look at him and thought that the name Clarence Humboldt matched perfectly, it was the first name that came to me.**  
 **Mr. Haly isn't seen in the show, but he does have comicbook appearances, so I've borrowed him from there.**

 **And as always, your feedback is my most valuable resource! It helps me grow, whether good or bad. Leave a few words, let me know what you think so far. Take a seat, let's talk.**  
 **So...how ya'll doin'? :D**

 _Inari_ \- Aww, thank you so much, how sweet of you to say!


	5. Walk The Line

The girder rig lights extinguished, plunging the tent into darkness. After a brief delay, Bessie was illuminated by a lone spotlight.

The line stretched ahead of her like a spider's thread. The world's narrowest man-made path. Her wire was so high that she if she wore Darryl's stilts she'd need another foot's clearance to touch the peak.

She took her first tentative step onto it, right center in the soft, fleshy dip between her first and second toes. The suede soles of her footed tights gripped. The wire's tension held firm. For the final touch she blanked her mind, letting her raw instinct, muscle memory, and training take over.

Solid footing was now behind her as she brought her other foot ahead of the first. Every conceivable angle was open for her to fall through now. A safety net was spread below, post to post, but she always preferred to pretend it wasn't there. She didn't want to rely on it.

The speakers were silent, save for a bass drum beat that synced with her every footfall. Step by careful step forward, she made her walk.

Lights seemed different here in Gotham. Whereas Bessie was usually accustomed to yellowy and sunny, these particular ones were hazy and bluish. Harsh. But they worked like no other. The light they offered was so sharp and clean that she could make out individual strands that made up the braided cable.

Her arms were aloft and stiff, making her look like she had no business being up there. Basically, it was tightrope walking down to it's barest definition. Boring.

Then, Bessie stopped at the halfway point, nearly frozen. She stopped moving. Her arms tilted and wobbled as she fought to keep the position. The drum beats died with her lack of motion.

She reveled in the thick, bated silence down below.

Then, lithe as a ballerina, she stylishly swiveled, now facing the way she came, and started walking the opposite way, sweeping her feet ahead, pointing her toes with every step like a graceful dancer, and returned back to her starting platform.

The sudden turn-around to her amateur demeanor earned a tremendous reaction. Bessie posed with an arm raised.

The first half minute always consisted of pretending to be cautious getting across. There was an art to it; if she faked being TOO stiff or wobbly, then the motions began to become a reality. Weight manipulation was key, and if something tilted too much in the wrong direction, the ground would get close awfully fast and it would be lights out. Unseen to the many onlookers down below, she kept her core tight. She was in complete control.

She had lacked the natural flair necessary for performers. Quiet and having been raised by and around more adults than children, she was naturally demure and respectful—tried not to raise her voice and kept her manners. Habits were hard to break. Mr. Haly saw it, too, she was just not flashy enough on her own. And then a gimmick was born. He claimed he was observing her when it came to him; her performance would not be her as herself, it would be a story. A little doll discovering how to walk for the first time.

A music box melody twinkled from the speakers, playing in a minor key though still sweet-sounding. Melancholy but hopeful.

The real performance began now. Allowing the crowd to catch their breath, she grabbed her prop hanging on the hook. Unfurling the clasp and popping the canopy, a darling, lacy little parasol emerged in full view, but it's style rendered it useless in practical settings. The white canopy, true to the nature of lace, had small, decorative, patterned holes which did nothing to protect, and the size itself wasn't enough to even block one's shoulders from sunshine. It was clearly only for show. The thing was much too small to protect much else from the sun other than one's scalp, and could never even so much as slow a sharp descent. The parasol was just a jaunty, comedic little prop to complete the look, there was little point to it's use otherwise other than just a little extra balance assistance for Bessie.

Props were frequently used in tightrope walking for balance assistance, whether it was a fan, a long pole, or walker's choice. They aided equilibrium. They were like an extension of her arms.

Adopting her T-pose, she stepped from the safety of the platform and strode the line again, looking more confident this time.

The tightwire bounced the barest of millimeters with her treading, but nothing she hadn't been trained to handle. Slack, though insanely minimal, was expected. If the cable were any stiffer it'd be made of wood. A little bounce was good, actually. Additionally, whenever Bessie daintily hopped the length across, it made her appear more sprightly. The trick was to keep the feet as close to the line as possible. Even though it looked like she was bouncing, her soles never truly left their ground. This wasn't a trampoline.

She spun the parasol over her shoulder, using her thumb to rotate the shaft. The canopy spiraled, adding a stimulating visual. Holding it far out again for the balance she needed, she performed a spry, jazzy little back and forth two-step.

Professional instructors would call her dances an uncoordinated mish-mash of differing styles. She wasn't correctly trained in any of them save for ballet, but regular audiences didn't seem to care or even notice. Frankly, walking along a cable several stories in the air left very little room for choreographic flair. When your path was no more than an inch wide, proper dance moves understandably needed to be altered in order to compensate.

It wasn't about being scared of heights, either. Frankly, Bessie wasn't really, it came with the job, but neither was she devoid of all fear. Vertigo was all but vanquished from her after years of practice. Heights were harmless—but the impact after freefall, that was a problem. So, bearing that in mind, there was an automatic response to being confident but cautious. Get too cocky, you weren't going to stay several feet up in the air very long. Get too comfortable, that highwire would disappear from under you like it were part of the magic portion of the circus.

Bessie returned to her platform again, but this time, she didn't turn around to face it. She placed on hand on her hip and raised the parasol in the air as a pose to ask whether the audience was on her side. They clapped for her. Bessie spread her arms out again. She crossed the wire's length end to end again—backwards.

Upon reaching the opposite platform, Bessie posed again and waved in an ethereal manner, acting as the doll she was playing. The audience cheered her, whistling. She couldn't say she was very good at bowing, but she still wanted to give some sort of signal of her thanks.

Clarence Humboldt clapped, the spotlight returning to him as he walked out. He brought the microphone to his mouth. "Riveting, isn't she? Give a hand to our Tightrope Titan, Bessie!"

A rumble of applause erupted. The ringmaster nervously dabbed his sleeve on his brow and stuck a finger in his collar, airing it out. "Whew! Were you all as nervous as I was? What a nerve-buster, I'm telling ya." Tugging a pale pink hankerchief from his breast pocket, he snapped it out and mopped his forehead. "They should rename the stratosphere the Strunasphere, am I right?" Another rumble, this time laughter.

Finished, he tucked the hankerchief back in his pocket.

"You know," he continued conversationally, "that was exciting and all, but you know what?" The spotlight followed him as he casually paced like he was thinking hard, and made his rounds so that he had a chance to face each section of the stands, to make every individual there feel like he was personally talking to them. Spritely pivoting, he held up a finger. "I think we can do better. We need more of a challenge, don't you think? What's say we..."—he downturned his chin which caused his hat brim to dip closer to his eyes. All jolliness disappeared, replaced by a mischievous glint—"...remove the net?"

The audience quieted.

"What do you think, Gotham? You think she has what it takes?"

Subdued clapping.

"I said do you think she has what it takes?!" Clarence cupped an ear in a grandstand display of showmanship.

The clapping raised in volume.

From Bessie's perspective, her speck of a ringmaster craned his neck upward and acknowledged her brightly. "What's say you up there, Bessie? Do you have what it takes to give these lovely people what they came here to see? Can you defy the walk of death one—more— _time_?!"

On cue she enthusiastically waved her okay to him and all the stands, just as rehearsed many times over.

"By jove, ladies and gentlemen, I think she's gonna do it! Give her a big round of applause so that she doesn't chicken out."

The crowd obeyed. Whooping cheers and shrill whistles cut in.

Bessie's smile was bashful and genuine, even if nobody could see it. That part always gave her an extra, encouraged boost.

Part two of her performance was a go. Attendants swiftly filtered from the sidelines and began work on unclipping and folding the net to take it away. Oversaid as the phrase was, there was a reason why people described heights this way; they all really did look like ants from her perspective, working as a colony. Her little platform didn't leave much room to pace, unfortunately, so she continued to stand there primly, waiting them out. She checked the dingy suede soles of her walking slippers—good, good, no rips or tears to take her by surprise.

The attendants, spotters, and extras folded the net with military precision and form, and carried it away, disappearing into the shadows of the darkened opening they appeared from.

"And now, ladies and gentlemen," Clarence announced in a low voice to build the anticipation. Light riggings that spanned the tent all disengaged. All except for two spotlights—one on Bessie, one on the ringmaster. "We present to you once again, Bessie "Stratosphere" Struna and her death-defying walk across the greatest hightop Gotham has ever witnessed."

Lowering the microphone to his side, Clarence faced Bessie's direction and snapped to attention like he was about to salute her. Stepping one leg back, he bent at the waist and extended one arm in an elaborate, stylish bow, the signal to give her the go-ahead. He faded away like a ghost as his spotlight died out, leaving just her, like the lone full moon in the sky.

Bessie walked the tightrope's length across for one lap, to sink in the fact that she was now doing this with no contingency plan, no bail-out. She was on her own.

Having now made it to the other side, she stopped, pretending to just notice a second pair of slippers hanging by a hook in the structure post. Pointe shoes. She took them in her hands curiously, the ribbons falling and dangling over her wrists. Supporting an elbow in thought, she tapped one of the slippers on her temple like an idea was brewing.

In excitement, she arched and rested her foot on the safety railing like it was a ballet barre. Delacing her regular rope-walking shoes one by one, setting them aside uniformly, she wiggled her feet into the specially altered, white, pointe shoes, lacing them tight over her ankles. This pair were specially made for her with wider, grippable soles because a cable would tear right through the delicate satin of everyday ballet slippers. Not to mention even wearing satin in the first place.

Donning her new footwear, Bessie faced the direction of the wire again but didn't leave quite just yet. She posed in ballet's Fourth Position, which consisted of crossing her knees, with her heels firmly on the ground and the toes pointing in opposite directions. Her knees bent in one or two pliés. Next, she extended her limbs straight into a full arabesque pose, supporting her whole body simply on one pointed foot, illustrating the ballet angle clearly for those who could not see the type of shoes she had just put on.

She was ready to go. Bessie lowered the one leg, touching both toes to the ground again, yet kept her feet on pointe. She paused in front of the tightwire, touching one pointed toe on it. The crowd had gone silent in anticipation. Stable, Bessie brought her other foot right behind, inching right onto the line.

Walking a wire on one's shoetips was obviously more difficult than regular walking. Less surface area of her feet added weight to the risk, thus her toes never left the wire—she pushed one ahead, then dragged the other behind it, inching forward, never one in front of the other. The audience was scarcely making a sound. Not that Bessie could hear much of it if they did, she was much too concentrated on keeping her feet rigidly pointed and inching forward like some sort of wind-up toy. This was where her body's ballet discipline really came into play.

Eventually, she made it to the other side. Thunder commenced. Bessie crossed her ankles and pliéd to bow to the crowd.

But she wasn't done yet. Her finale was here. Bessie untied the ballet slippers, relying this time only on the suede feet of her tights. The applause hadn't quite died out from the last feat just yet, but the audience was gradually quieting down, slowly realizing that there was still more to be had.

Bessie strolled back onto the tightwire, dainty and light, like The Doll had finally built up enough practice to walk confidently. Meeting the middle dead center, she momentarily paused there. Then, she began a gentle bend of her knees, lowering herself carefully, slowly. Sitting was very possible to do, but the positioning had to be just right. She couldn't sit on the wire like a chair, but she could sure make it look as easy.

Now sitting prettily, properly supported underneath, Bessie folded her arms over her shins, hugging her knees. Letting that position sink in for a spell, she then stretched her legs forward, inching little by little until they were flat and crossed her ankles, while at the same time, slow and stiff, laying her torso as if lowering into a coffin.

Straight as a plank now and resting her entire body flat, she gazed up into the circus tarp's highest peaks as though she were in a grassy meadow, contemplating life. To sell it even further, she arched her arms over her head, interlaced her fingers, and tucked them underneath her head. If done right, the overall position was supposed to appear carefree.

On the inside, though, she was busily working on her core strength to keep rigid and not upset the equilibrium she was tightly focusing on.

The crowd's frenzy almost blended with the blood droning in her ears, caused by her holding the position.

Getting out of that position was tricky. No sudden moves were allowed, lest she offset her equilibrium. Uncrossing her ankles, she used her core to rise from her sitting position, letting one leg dangle from the knee-down over the line. This one leg was her life-saver, helping her stabilize. Hanging the other astride for spread of balance, she now could safely sit up straight. A line of sweat formed at her hairline, absorbing into the water-proof makeup, rolling off. Planting the bent leg's foot on the tightrope, she swung the dangling one up for momentum, and was now crouching, but both feet firmly on the wire. Straightening and able to walk again, she ambled back to the platform where she began.

Tangerine lights lit up from the girders and light rigging, igniting the entire tent in warm illumination. Bessie lifted one arm into the air, accepting her applause. In total, her full set was only ten minutes long, but it always felt like an odyssey for how much discipline went into it.

Clarence was back on the show floor, clapping with his microphone in hand. "Ladies and gentleman, Haly's Tightrope Titan, Bessie 'Stratosphere' Struna!"

Bessie waved, grinning ear to ear. Gotham was very kind this night, their praise was humbling.

She couldn't stay very long, though, her time was up. Gathering her two pairs of shoes and the parasol, slipping them into a provided drawstring bag on one of the hooks, she hung it in the crook of her arm and began her descent down the ladder.

All attention was now back on Clarence. The horse riding portion was coming up next.

Bessie walked back to the curtained tunnels. An attendant held the opening aside for her.

"Thanks," she said in passing, dotting the sweat at her hairline with the back of her hand. Some of it was from exertion, some of it was from the heat of the spotlights.

Leo was sitting at a table, playing cards with a clown. He noticed her coming through. "Hey, kid, good job out there."

He likely hadn't watched her perform tonight, it was the same as any other one she did, everyone had witnessed eachother's work more than enough times to watch it again for the fiftieth, but if Bessie showed up afterwards still alive and walking, then her show was a success. Plus the audience's volume levels were a good gauge whether things went bad or not.

"Thank you, Mr. Baccardi," she said in the midst of catching her breath.

Given that Bessie's performance was only in the middle of the First Act and that an intermission would follow before the Second, she felt she had plenty of time to check on Jerome before curtain call.

Slipping out of the stuffy waiting area virtually unnoticed, the night greeted her kindly with a pleasant, cooling breeze to meet her damp back. She breathed in through her nose, euphoric once the air touched the back of her neck.

The evening was so calming. The path of draped string lights illuminating her way looked magical. Crickets hiding in the tallgrass were overactive, but their music was charming accompaniment. Cutting a direct path through the fairground, she arrived on the doorstep of the Valeska's caravan in little time. The sparkling river over in the distance, flecked with moonlight, was a lovely touch and Bessie felt covetous (with no hard feelings) over the Valeska's claim to such a view.

The metallic door rattled under her knuckles as she knocked.

"Just a second," said a voice within. Bessie's heart jumpstarted. That was definitely Jerome.

Following a bit of rattling, the door swung open, and Bessie saw the familiar swoop of red hair. She brightened.

"Bess," Jerome said pleasantly, with nary a double-take at her elaborate costume and make-up. He'd seen her in it enough times to merely consider it a second skin. "What brings you here?"

"Hi," she said. She didn't really have anything prepared. "Just wanted to check on you. Mr. Baccardi also. You know, to make sure you were feeling okay. You know, since the other day. I'm sorry, I would have checked in again yesterday, but rehearsal really ate up my whole day, and I thought that it might have been too late to visit you, and—"

Jerome smiled and held up a hand. "It's more than okay, Bess. And I am feeling a little better now, thank you. For everything."

Bessie didn't feel comfortable accepting his thanks. Frankly, she felt as though she hadn't done enough. "No problem," she answered despite that, beaming.

Jerome drummed his fingers on the door, eyes focused beyond her, looking out to the tent. "Hey, aren't you supposed to be on the tightrope about right now?"

"Just finished," she said. "I've got a little time to spare before curtain call if you wanted to take a walk around or something."

Jerome's face fell. "Ah. That's very sweet of you, Bess, to think of me, but I'm very sorry to be a disappointment again. I've got so many chores. Mom left me a list last night and it's best I get them done before she comes back tonight."

"Oh," said Bessie in a sinking tone. She attempted to look on the bright side. "Well, that's okay. We'd be kind of pressed for time anyway, right? What with me having to return for curtain call and everything." Now that she really thought about it, the both of them had been kind of pressed for time since the rusted carousel back in Blüdhaven, and it didn't seem fair. Not when they were making such nice progress. Life didn't appear to be too generous with time involving two everyday kids.

"She works so hard, it's the least that I can do."

"You've always been a good son," Bessie said encouragingly, hoping that he knew it deep down in his heart—wishing that he knew it.

"Oh." He brushed off her comment shyly. He paused a moment, returning his gaze to something past her. Bessie was about to automatically turn and follow his eyeline, but he spoke up again, bringing her attention back. "Hey, Bess?" he said quietly, smiling again, fingers pressing the edge of the door. "I meant what I said the other night. Sometimes I really do feel like you're the only friend I got."

Bessie felt a surge in her gut to step up and embrace him reassuringly, just like he had done for her in the aftermath of John and Mary's impromptu display the other night, but by now, only his face was visible through the crack in the door. "Next time, then?" she said.

"Next time, for sure," he promised.

Bessie nodded. "Alright."

"Oh and tell Mr. Baccardi that I'll be right as rain in no time. Okay?"

"I'll personally deliver it myself."

His smile made his eyes bright. "I knew I could count on you, Bess. See you." He disappeared back inside, shutting the door.

Bessie lowered her hand mid-rise. Jerome had left too soon to see her wave.

The journey back to the Big Top was a lot more lonely than she had planned, but life was like that. Lately most things had just been a series of bad luck right when Bessie and Jerome were working on mending an old, well-used, but recently neglected bridge. But they had all the time in the world, she was in no rush. The two of them had never been all that much driven to keep to strict timelines.

Bessie re-entered the waiting area. Leo was still playing cards on the foldout table with the clown named Fergus Belcher, yet another, Jamie Carrolla, had joined the game since she left. Bessie pulled up a foldout chair, dragging it up to the table. "Mind if I watch?" she asked.

Leo smiled invitingly. "Always room for another player, kiddo. The game's Cheat. Ever play?"

* * *

Bessie lost for the better half of each round. She owned a horrid poker face, Fergus, Leo, and Jamie saw through most of her swindles when she tried to claim she had more than she really did. Nevertheless, she got a few small laughs out of it, and to their credit the three adult men went a little easier on her than they had when the only opponents were themselves.

Graysons started filing in. Intermission was long-gone and tonight's show was winding down to it's brilliant, most thrilling closer. Bessie was only glad that her back was towards them. John would be very easy to miss if she could just stay where she was. She squared her shoulders as if she were building a wall between them. However, the quickening pace of her heart was betraying her. In truth, she really missed looking at him.

Luckily, Bessie could absorb herself into forced distraction when another round of cards began.

* * *

The delicacy and grace of a tightrope took a backseat to acrobats in flight. A Grayson could make you believe a human could fly. The trapeze act was crawling closer to its end, but surely no one in the audience wanted it to. They were enamored, by the sound of things. Likewise, the card game was also drawing to a close. Time was fast approaching to prepare for curtain call. Fergus gathered his pack of cards, and Bessie helped pick up a couple that had slipped under the table.

Just as she rose from the floor, clutching a slippery little five of hearts, a commotion thundered from beyond the curtain. Heads raised, including Bessie's. The sound didn't seem very happy, like the Grayson trapeze act should have earned. It sounded chaotic.

Fergus and Jamie immediately departed through the curtain to investigate.

Leo held out his arm to block Bessie. "Stay here, kiddo," he warned, and he left after them.

Bessie obeyed, but still watched the curtain uncertainly.

Eventually the other patrons in the waiting area who stayed behind grew antsy. Their curiosity took hold. Darryl was holding back the curtain and through it Bessie could see a sliver of the Big Top. A massive fist-fight had erupted in the center ring. Costumes flashed in blurs for how heated the exchanges were. Angry shouts blended together, belonging to no one and everyone at the same time. Bessie couldn't pick one from another.

Not surprisingly, two particular families were in the middle of it all.

* * *

 **A/N: Wut, TWO chapters in the same month? I must be getting sick, how unlike me! Stop me, I'm insane!**

 **Looks like the ball has finally started to roll, huh?**

 _runningoutofspac -_ Not cringey you say?! WHEW, that's a relief. I'm always really worried about whether the story comes off as corny, I certainly don't want it to. Sometimes it's hard to translate the feelings in your head into words. So thanks for letting me know, that really helps! Thanks for stopping by, hope you can stick around!

 _Jeromeisminelol -_ For serious?! You check everyday?! Gee willikers! I sure am sorry that I don't update with as much frequency as you might hope, but I do want only the best of my abilities to be posted, so a lot of editing and perfecting delays me. But I'm so happy you like the result! Yes, yes, I absolutely will continue, no one has to worry.

 _NoAccountYetxD -_ Awww, thank you! Really glad to hear that you like the chemistry between Jerome and Bessie, that's really pleasing to hear. Continue? You got it.

 _LittleMissCorpse -_ Thank you! I'll do my best!

 **Thanks a million times for the reviews guys! They really help me see where I'm at, whether I can keep the attention of the reader or not. You may not realize it, but you help me improve when you do. And your patience is so beautiful, thanks for sticking with me.**


	6. Snakes And Murders

Bessie's brows furrowed. She felt terribly helpless and anxious just standing in the same place. She wanted everyone in the scrum to stop, but how could she possibly go about doing that? Where could she start? She'd be trampled in the chaos before she opened her mouth. Her feet shifted, tensing, spurring her to do something, but her mind was rationalizing all the ways she would fail.

A man in a slate grey suit stepped forward from the stands, brandishing what looked to be a leather wallet. His mouth was working, but his demands were drowned out by the overbearing noise, going unheard. A golden glint in the wallet reflected off one of the lights, and Bessie's heart dropped.

An undercover police officer.

She took a step back, but delicately, as if the officer's ears could isolate the sound and find her. She couldn't be caught up in this mess and be interrogated as a witness. What if they dug deeper into her records and found out her secret? Haly's Circus could be done for, and it'd be all her fault!

She couldn't stay anymore. Turning on her heel, she scuttled out of the waiting area and into the night, tutu flouncing with her hurried pace. Grayson/Lloyd fights usually sorted themselves out, she wasn't needed here.

The officer might have been acting alone, for there were no flashing police cruisers backing him up on the outside. Yet, she reminded herself.

Bessie felt like there was a huge target on her back. Her caravan home was approaching. The lights were out, meaning her mother was still working the ticket booth, and her father was likely off somewhere, maybe having a friendly beer with some other crew. Slipping inside, she shut the door, feeling a small sense of relief at the darkness now engulfing her. Like it could hide her.

Perhaps her reaction may have been an overreaction, but she always felt safer to not set herself up for risk—minus the tightrope walking. Tightrope walking was different. Not for some sick thrill fantasy, not even for the adoration, but for the accomplishment. One thing she could truly be skilled at, one thing that filled her with discipline and concentration and purpose. She wanted to show people something they'd never seen before. To smile when they went home. To be awed and uplifted. She never had the power to do this in any other setting. She didn't want to just be seen doing something spectacular, she wanted to make an impact. Opportunities to make impacts weren't given freely. They could be rare and fleeting.

Walking the wire was a moment of peace.

Why she chose such an occupation, it was not any one reason. The test of how much her body could truly withstand, the fun, the accomplishment, seeing what she was really made of: these were all equal culprits. Every other resident? They felt the exact same way about their roles.

And she didn't want that taken away. She didn't want her family split up, blood and non-blood alike.

From the kitchen window poured the caravan's only illumination. Passing every once in a while to check in on the Big Top, Bessie could spot fleeting glances of audience members evacuating calmly. So much for immersion tonight. She wondered just how many of them would be lining her mother's ticket booth, demanding refunds because of the interrupted finale.

She paced while wiping off her make-up. This part was always the most time-consuming piece of her costume to remove, but she had plentiful minutes to spare tonight. The hype and hysteria was unlikely to die down anytime soon. The whole fiasco maybe wouldn't even be sorted until the A.M.

Once every last make-up streak was removed, ten minutes had passed within that time. Splashing her face with water from under the tap, Bessie patted her skin dry with a cloth, and then began to pull and unravel the elastics and clips holding up her puffed hair.

Movement passed by her window and she froze, arms still aloft. Clarence walked by purposefully and soon left the window's view. The police officer from earlier followed, beside a statuesque, raven-haired woman Bessie had never seen before. And...Jerome? What was he doing with them?

Bessie leaned over the sink, watching them go by, but they soon left the furthest angle the window allowed. Where were they going?

Stealthily as she dared, Bessie inched open her front door just a bit to peek outside, and met a truly bizarre sight. The odd little parade was being led by Sheba of all things, curling and slithering her way through the dead grass where her colors stood out, supposedly to a location only she knew. At least, they must have been following her, every member of the party was watching her every move, changing their trajectory whenever Sheba made even the slightest cant to the left or right.

Bessie edged the door a little wider. The situation was so strange that she was almost hypnotized by it. Whatever Clarence and Jerome had to do with any of it wasn't clear. Especially Jerome, as she thought he was supposed to have been at home doing his chores.

Sheba was on course for a stationary flatbed truck on the edge of the compound, the one used for transporting bales of hay for the circus horses. Clarence, Jerome, the cop, and the woman paused to watch anticipatively, as did Bessie from her distance. She leaned a little further, more than she would have dared.

The snake began to wind her way slowly up on the squared bales left on the ground, stacked like stairs. She was climbing. Tucking her head inside a small fold opening in the white tarp on the flatbed, her body slithered underneath, disappearing from view.

Other circus denizens were making a small cluster around the scene. They seemed to be spilling through the cracks, leaving from their homes, or from the tent, or appearing from other paths through the fairground. Bessie, however, stayed put. If this was drawing a crowd, it must have been something important.

The cop stepped up and swept the tarp away. Bessie heard the reactions well before she discovered the cause. It was so hard to see from her vantage, the hay bales in the flatbed were covering what the onlookers must have been seeing. The reactions were clearly not favorable. The first sound that carried over to her was a intake of horror somewhere in the cluster of onlookers.

Then, Bessie was hooked by the sight of Jerome. He fell to his knees, arms loose at his sides in despair.

Bessie's heart was in freefall.

The cop turned on Clarence, speaking with a commanding stance, while the woman came to Jerome's side, placing a consoling hand on his shoulder.

The security bubble Bessie's caravan provided drifted further and further behind her. The scene was expanding, sharpening with better clarity, getting closer before her consciousness told her she was moving. Her mind was blank of worry about the police presence.

Jamie Carolla, one of the clowns she had just played Cheat with only half an hour ago, was among them when she caught up, right in the thick of it all. "Jamie?" she asked, concern rising in her voice. "What's going on?"

Jamie whirled at the sound of her voice. "Hey, hey, hey," he said bracingly to stop her from moving any further. He held her shoulder to keep her back and tried to mask her eyes from the truckbed. "Kid, you shouldn't be seeing this. Go home." His tone was kind and considerate even through his rough Irish-Italian brogue, but the gentleness could not hide that something seriously wasn't right.

"What's happening?" Bessie's voice got tighter as everyone around her reacted more. She didn't want to ask that question because she almost didn't want to know the answer. The words just slipped out. Ghastly curiosity. Something was terribly wrong.

A break in the crowd revealed Clarence. He was looking down in shame as he spoke to the cop.

Jamie, for concern that Bessie might see something traumatizing, stepped in front of her to block her view. He hesitated, stopping and starting, trying to find the best way to soften the blow. "They found Lila. Dead," he said.

Bessie stopped trying to see over the gathering. She locked eyes with Jamie, searching them as if asking to repeat what he'd just said. She breathed out, but nothing returned. It was stolen. "Wh-?"

Jamie remained stony, chin wrinkled for how grimly tight his lips were and how sorry he felt. He didn't want to be the one to tell her, but he had to do it. Bessie had heard exactly what he meant.

"But-But I saw her." Her voice was barely audible.

"I know this is a lot to take, Bessie, but that's impossible."

"But I saw her," she said more insistently. "Th-this morning. She was there." She wasn't looking at Jamie anymore. "I said hi."

"Bessie, this happened later in the day, afterward."

"No, I...I-I know I did, I..." Her voice ascended pitch until it was too high to be heard and it disappeared.

She didn't remember meeting the ground. She just suddenly felt a lot shorter, and dry grass was poking through her tights. Her knees knocked together as her legs splayed in opposite directions.

A thickness pounded in Bessie's ears and she heard very little after that. Jamie was saying something to her, talking down from his vantage. She thought she heard him, but his words floated between the two, never reaching her. Bessie's chest was clenching harder and harder and her inhale came shuddery. Bessie needed to separate herself from this situation. She needed to run. No destination, just run, until she could forget what she'd just heard. It didn't seem even remotely possible that someone she had seen just that morning could end the day gone. Lila Valeska's life was snatched away somewhere in that time.

The night was cold, everybody wore coats or was pulling them on as they left their caravans to investigate, but Bessie's compulsion left her in just her tightrope costume. However, she didn't feel a thing. A different kind of cold was invading her bloodstream. Her breath was so shallow that the vapour escaping her mouth was scarce, barely even mist.

"Ms. Valeska, she...she's..."

"I know, kid," Jamie said heavily, understanding. "I know."

Bessie felt freed for having been spared saying it, but didn't feel any lighter.

Jerome's image rushed back to her full force, and she was violently smacked by the dreadful realization. Jerome!

"Pete," said Jamie, looking off to someone behind them. "You gotta take her home, the poor kid shouldn't have to watch this."

Whatever the two had agreed upon, Bessie soon felt a gnarled hand on her bicep, holding her in a docile grip.

"Up you get. Come on," encouraged Pete with a grandfatherly gentleness. Peter the popcorn cart man, a kindly senior who wore his silver hair in a ponytail, helped her up. Bessie felt light-headed, steering easily in her dazed state. Pete guided her with a hand on her shoulder, heading on the path to her home.

As they passed the vicinity, there was a gap in the crowd. Bessie noted a slumped form in the flatbed truck from her peripheral, and her heart buzzed with an unpleasant jolt. She squeezed her eyes shut and turned away before her eyes turned traitorous and looked. Oh, Ms. Valeska...

She noticed how Jerome wasn't there anymore. She would have found him if he was, she could spot his hair anywhere. He'd either been swept off somewhere or left of his own anguished accord, and she didn't know which direction to start or who to ask where he was now. All she could do was hope that he was being taken care of.

Though only a short, half-minute journey, Peter made sure Bessie got to her home safely, and made doubly sure she got inside through the threshold before leaving her there. He stayed to say some words of comfort and wisdom he'd collected over his long years, but Bessie could barely repeat what they were. She thanked Pete in an automated manner. He nodded solemnly, and took his leave to return to the gruesome discovery, back the way he came.

Bessie shut the door behind her almost immediately, like the air outside had been poisoned by the terrible event. The caravan felt stiflingly quiet after coming in from all the commotion outside. Once she ascended the two stairs and into the trailer's main walkway, the lace neck of her costume felt terribly confining all of a sudden, like a growing layer was slowly crawling up, containing her. Desperate to remove it, Bessie exchanged the costume for loose-fitting pajamas in a hurry. Usually she folded her costume and stored it properly, but this time she just let it bunch at her feet when she kicked it off, leaving it shoved against the couch. Tonight's scene played over and over in her head. Every time she saw Jerome fall to his knees, she felt sick with pity. What could she possibly say to him after this? What could anyone say? Her heart was splintering, and finally, it shattered for him. And this time she couldn't offer a single thing to make things better. She plopped heavily on her couch, slumped and defeated.

Voices passed every once in a while, muffled on the outside. Word was spreading at an alarming rate. Bessie couldn't take standing still anymore. She unfolded her sofa-bed and got in, huddling and facing away from the door, wishing over and over for her parents to come home, chewing absently on her fingernail.

Within minutes, they actually did. The front door creaked open and they entered, talking hastily between themselves in Slovene. They must have quieted when they saw Bessie's turned back. Bessie held still, pretending to be asleep. Her parents likely would have wanted to talk to her about tonight, to explain a harsh reality in the best way they could and to soothe their daughter's inevitable fears over the matter, but Bessie didn't think she could handle something so shocking so quickly. All she wanted right now was just to know that they were near and accounted for and safe. Her parents shut off the lights on their way to their room, leaving her alone.

She could hear her parents speaking in low tones in their room for well over two hours. Gradually, their sentences spaced further and further until Bessie heard no more and they must have gone to sleep. She had no idea how late the hour was, but she wished they kept talking. She didn't want to feel alone. Especially now that she had nothing to stave off her own thoughts.

Bessie laid petrified beneath her covers that night. Whoever had done this to Lila was still out there. Maybe prowling through the caravans, choosing their next victim. She clutched the blanket tighter, bunching it to her mouth. Soon, she pulled it over her head, willing herself to disappear. Eventually, she cried, scared, feeling much too vulnerable to sleep. She thought back to just a few nights ago when she and Jerome were out after dark. Just how much danger had they put themselves in?

Ms. Valeska was no saint, but even Bessie did not believe she deserved such a fate. A hole in her heart was growing. An ugly, black, fungal hole, and it only grew, devouring the naivete that resided there once. Family could have murdered family tonight. Haly's would never be the same again.

Life would never be the same again.

Haly's Circus, her lifelong refuge and home, had been pulled into a waking nightmare.

* * *

 **A/N: We're finally here, the countdown is done.**

 **But this story's definitely not over yet. The aftermath is just beginning.**

 _Jeromeisminelol_ \- Yeah, some harsh life lessons might definitely be on the horizon. Thank you, I'm glad you're enjoying yourself!


	7. The Show Must Go On

The first thing Bessie thought of when she woke up was Jerome, and for the barest, skinniest, fleeting second she wasn't sure why.

And the crushing thought finally occurred to her.

Jerome was now an orphan.

Salty residue, courtesy of last night's tears, left her eyelashes tacky and clumped as she blearily opened her eyes. She possessed no motivation, however, to cast aside the bedsheet cocoon she'd twisted for herself during the night. A cover was like a refuge; could have been a bedsheet, could have been a coat, it didn't matter, the containment provided one more barrier protecting her from the unforgiving outside. She continued to lie there, wondering if she'd ever build up the courage to leave her caravan ever again.

The concept of death was always a fact in her mind. She wasn't that naïve. Remembering it's origin or how she grew to understand it over the course of her life was difficult to pinpoint. Seemingly, the knowledge was just always there.

What was different this time was that never before had she ever had to personally deal with not just death, but the concept of murder. Not death after old age, but life stopped short—violently taken. Books, movies, and popular media were her only exposure. Now, it was all happening in front of her, and the fallout spanned an even greater radius than she could have imagined. Everybody at Haly's was going to be affected in some way. Every last one. Murder never acted alone; it brought with it pain, sadness, confusion, betrayal, panic, and terror.

Mrs. Struna was stirring something in a pot on the stove just a few feet away. Checking on her daughter, she noticed Bessie's open, listless eyes. Leaving the wooden spoon to rest on the handle, Mrs. Struna came over. The bed sank as she sat down on the mattress and smoothed Bessie's hair. " _Ljubica_ , did you sleep?"

Bessie stared at the cabinet wall panel beside her bed. She shook her head.

Mrs. Struna tutted sympathetically, tucking Bessie's bed-fluffed hair behind her ear. "Come. I made soup for us."

Bessie's appetite had been curbed after last night, but after wrestling inwardly over the idea, she came to the conclusion that she needed a distraction. Her movements were heavy and sluggish as she eventually rolled and untwisted her cloth haven. Leaving the warmth of her bed behind, she crossed her arms and sat down at the table.

While her mother stirred the pot and ladled soup into a bowl, Bessie shrank a little further when a new thought occurred. Maybe this didn't just stop at Ms. Valeska. Was everyone accounted for in the morning? To find another victim this morning would have plunged Bessie into a state of paranoia to which she was certain she'd never recover. Ms. Valeska's death had been horrid enough, but to lose another would bring about signs of an epidemic in the making.

A stark white sheet of paper layed on their kitchen table. The black type was so large that Bessie was sure she could read it if it were posted at the farthest end of her trailer. She spun the paper to read correctly. Though the letters may have been large, the message was brief.

 **ATTENTION:**

 _Last night's tragic passing of our own Lila Valeska has reached Gotham. Various media outlets have been spotted on the premises. Do not engage and do not answer their questions. Redirect all queries and contact to me. If I am not available in my office, offer my mobile phone number._

 _Funeral service times to be posted forthcoming._

 _Keep vigilant. Keep safe._

 _ **C.C. Haly**_

The notice concluded, punctuated by his sharp and short signature.

The note seemed brash and dismissive to Ms. Valeska's death, but Bessie knew Mr. Haly better than that. He was keeping them all safe from the outside frenzy this must have been causing, and from innocent words becoming unforgivingly twisted in the news. He had a lot of damage control on his hands, while simultaneously having to balance the mental well-being of his employees. The note was short and abrupt, but Mr Haly was not an insensitive man. He would take his proper grieving period later, like he always did, so that everyone else could have theirs first.

The steaming bowl of vegetable soup seemed to just magically appear out of thin air right in front of her, for Bessie was so absorbed. Clutching her spoon, she ate mechanically, distracted by so much mental distance that she was barely aware of any sense of flavor in her mouth. She could have been pouring dishwater down her throat and it was unlikely she would have noticed.

Mrs. Struna sat across from her daughter, propping her head in one hand, looking out the window contemplatively. Last night's news had evidently drained her as well.

"Where's daddy?" asked Bessie. He was clearly not in the caravan, he would have made his presence known by now, and he wasn't in bed because he never slept in past 8:00.

"At the police station."

Bessie stopped, hovering her spoon halfway to her mouth.

Her mother tore her eyes away from the window. "No, no, do not be scared, _ljubica,"_ she soothed. "Daddy is not in trouble. The police need to ask some questions and if he saw anything. They took lots of people downtown this morning. Lots. They are going to find who did this, do not be scared. Okay?"

But fear was a rebellious thing. No matter how much Bessie wanted to tell herself the same, fear was making itself well-known within her. Notorious, even, bent on taking over her mind. There was so much to be scared of. The place she'd always thought of as the one safe place in this world was now compromised. It wasn't as though she could just move away until the frenzy was all over. Haly's was the only place she could go. It was her beginning and her end.

"Am...am I going to be questioned?" she asked. She couldn't handle interrogative processes.

"Of course not," assured Mrs. Struna, reaching over to smooth Bessie's hair. "You have no connections to anything, you had nothing to do with none of this. Nothing will happen to you, you're safe."

Bessie quieted, ruminating over her mother's words, hoping that they were right. She just had to be content with the knowledge that she wasn't part of the Lloyd/Grayson fight that erupted last night, nor was she directly connected to Lila in order to be considered a suspect or even a holder of valuable information.

Another minute of silence passed where Mrs. Struna gave the window her attention again. Bessie's soup bowl was nothing but a shallow pool with just another two spoonfuls and a mushy carrot left to drain. She hadn't forgotten the most important person in all of this. "Where's Jerome?" she asked, apprehensive over the answer.

"He went downtown early in the morning, too. They should all be back in a few hours." Mrs. Struna rubbed a finger under her chin and tutted in great pity. "Poor, sweet boy. I wish there was something I could do."

Mrs. Struna spoke for the both of them. Bessie was almost afraid of confronting him when the time came. This event was so monumentous that it would become a measurement in all their lifetimes: pre-Lila and post-Lila. Likewise with her son. There were so many wrong things to say, and none to make things right. The thought of several people already giving their condolences kept her on her seat. Maybe he'd already heard everything by this point, and she almost felt relief at having an excuse not to confront a dreadful reality.

Then the guilt poured right in. She was just thinking of herself. Whatever she felt in that moment didn't matter, wasn't supposed to matter. The only person who mattered right now was him. She _had_ to go see Jerome whether or not she had anything insightful to say. He needed to know that she didn't run away when he needed a safety net the most.

Job commitments seemed like they should have been a scratch today, given the circumstances, but no cancellations were posted. Pros and cons fought hard on that decision like a tug of war. On the one hand, a murdered member of Haly Circus' extended family was a somber occasion, and the pursuit of money in its wake felt classless, disrespectful, and inhuman. On the other, there was that oft-repeated phrase, notorious in the entertainment industry: "the show must go on."

Duty seemed to be a force that drove Bessie's legs to walk, reluctant as she was. Throwing herself into her work would cloud her mind and would allow her just a few stolen moments of peace. Keeping her routine on track was the only way she could cope. Complete derailment would just throw her into disorganization and confusion. At least just one thing needed to keep time just as it always had so that she could keep enough of herself together to mourn Ms. Valeska properly.

Mrs. Struna was reluctant when Bessie told her of her plans. "Don't leave the fairground. Stay in groups," Mrs. Struna warned. She was standing at the sink, washing dishes, glaring out the kitchen window. "Mr. Haly should have cancelled today," she added in a grumble.

Dressing herself and carrying out her morning routine just as mechanically as she ate, Bessie let the front door clack shut behind her as she descended the stairs. Sunlight was dimmed behind some clouds, but otherwise the sky was mostly clear, and deceptively cheery. The air wasn't terribly cold, but Bessie put her hands in her vest jacket pockets anyway. Her feet knew the path and didn't need one hundred percent of her focus to do the job.

In all this time, even though less than twenty-four hours passed since, Bessie had yet to cry over Ms. Valeska. Shock worked like a cork. Everything stayed inside, fizzing and building and waiting. Acceptance was the key to release, but how horrid that release felt. Ms. Valeska would never greet Bessie again. She'd never coo over how she wanted Bessie to fit into her music box. She would never dance with her snake again. Bessie's cheeks warmed and her nose dripped, but finally, her nerves couldn't take it anymore. A small sob, going unheard by anyone, slipped from her mouth and her eyes clouded.

The ground were emptier than normal. A couple crew members were dotted about the place, doing their daily maintenance, but not as many as there normally would have been. Maybe circus commitments were voluntary today, Bessie wasn't sure. Whether she wanted it or not, she had enough privacy to cry as freely as she wanted.

A rumble of human voices—many by the sound of it—seemed to float on the air. Bessie didn't slow, but she did perk up her head, wiping her nose on her long sleeve. The rumble sounded excitable. A fork in the caravan maze stopped her, and she looked down to her right. The long half-dirt half-grass strip led to a gate at the far end, where a frothing black mass flashed a couple times. Bessie sank her hands further into her pockets and huddled to mind her own business. News reporters.

The media didn't feel welcome here. Under normal circumstances they popped around occasionally with sincere tidings, doing their job to report on the show. Most were polite and fair in their inquiries, and even well-mannered despite an upcoming less-than-stellar experience review in the papers.

Now they appeared as a cluster of vicious sharks, clamouring over eachother to get the story first. The tragedy of Ms. Valeska was the chum, and all the circus members left to tell the tale were the fishermen trapped in their boat. Surrounded. On Haly's side of the gate stood one lone employee, mostly likely telling them to leave given his hand gestures. Maybe even telling them to direct their questions to Mr. Haly as they were all instructed to do. Bessie turned away and headed left.

She thought hard about keeping to her regular path, the one she trekked nearly everyday since she was twelve. Though distance and twists and turns changed in every new city, the destination was always the same: the practice tent.

But not today.

She headed in the direction of the river. Some things in life were just more important to nurture.

Jerome's caravan came up sooner than she was ready for it. Even his home looked isolated in its own solitude. Taking the stairs in a cumbersome manner like she was a hundred pounds heavier, she stepped right up at the door, hesitating. Taking one more drag of her sleeve under her nose and sniffing to pull herself together, she knocked as unintrusively as she could.

Maybe he hadn't come home yet, she thought. The lack of an answer seemed to confirm it. Nevertheless, Bessie had to make sure. If Jerome was there, she preferred this be done sooner rather than later. She knocked a second time, this time adding announcement to her arrival. "Jerome?" she called. "It's me, Bessie. Are you there? Can I talk to you?"

Silence greeted her back. Still, she waited the necessary amount.

"Just a second," said a feeble voice within.

Bessie's heart skipped. There was no going back from this point. Her countenance was brittle, but she fortified her spine.

The door clicked from the inside. Slowly, it opened to darkness inside. The curtains were drawn and all the lights were off, save for a bit of illumination coming from Sheba's indoor tank, unseen from Bessie's angle. Jerome emerged from behind, as sullen and downtrodden as Bessie expected to be. And it broke her heart to see him in that state. She forgot any inhibition she'd ever felt in coming here. His kind, warm eyes, looking into her own, were ringed in red, though it seemed he'd already cried out all the tears he could a while ago.

"Oh, Jerome..." Bessie said in dismay, taking him in. He was much too tall for her, but infinitely small details such as that were too minor to matter. Stepping into the threshold and rising on the tips of her toes, she encased her arms over his shoulders, holding as bolsteringly as she possibly could. The hug from the other night, when he was the one to comfort her, felt so distant. In another lifetime. Things had changed now.

Jerome didn't react right away. Soon enough, though, he relaxed in her hold and did the same, burying his face in her shoulder. "Thanks for coming, Bess," he said quietly.

Bessie patted and rubbed his back in response. "Everybody will take care of you," she promised. Everything coming out of her mouth at that point acted as though she'd actually known they were going to happen. "They would never turn you away, you'll be taken care of, you'll always be home." She felt that she was the wrong person to try and bring some sort of comfort to him, she had no powerful sway in the circus, and maybe it wasn't her place to speak for them, but they wouldn't cast him out. No way. She knew that for certain. These people could no sooner turn away one of their own than set fire to Big Top. Mr. Haly would never kick him out.

Jerome exhaled languidly through his nose, as if in relief. "Thank you, Bess." He patted her back. "I appreciate that."

Just like the other night, she allowed Jerome to be the first to choose when to let go, because this time she knew for sure that he really was the one who needed it more than her. Delaying only a few seconds longer, Jerome finally relinquished in his unique, gentle way, and Bessie obliged. He scarcely made eye-contact, choosing to concentrate on the floor for the most part, but she took no offence.

"My mom told me about you having to go down to the station," Bessie said, keeping her voice even softer than it was normally, which made her virtually inaudible to anyone within a five step range.

"Yeah," said Jerome. He smiled for her sake, but it was weighted from his grief. It didn't come as naturally as it used to. "They needed to know a little more about her, to try and figure out what happened. They were nice, though."

"That's good."

Jerome nodded. "Hey," he said as if he'd suddenly realized something, "you need a drink of water or something?" Even in the face of grief he didn't forget his manners and that he was technically still a host.

"No, no," said Bessie quickly, waving the offer away, "I'm fine, I don't need anything." Even if she was thirsty she would have declined. To take anything from him, even his time and energy, felt greedy.

Turning away from her, Jerome walked the length of the trailer to the kitchen sink. "Well, more tap water for me, then," he said with some forced mirth. Maybe to keep things as they were before the dark cloud descended. Bessie watched him pull a clean mug from the drying side of the sink, his back to her. In his hands, his fingers tapped and stroked the mug, but he wasn't turning on the tap. His movements were slowing.

Suddenly, he hung his head and his shoulders quaked. He fell to his knees, shielding his eyes as his body was wracked by quiet, private sobbing. Bessie's heart kickstarted. She ran as much as one could run across a cramped caravan. "Jerome?!" She lowered on one knee behind him, hands hovering but not touching him, unsure of what they could possibly do.

Jerome gestured dismissively over his shoulder. "It's okay," he said through his thickened voice. "It's okay, don't worry." He exhaled bracingly to calm himself down, forcing his tears back. "I'm okay."

It couldn't have been healthy to hold back such strong emotion and sorrow, but Bessie didn't say a word against him. People mourned differently.

Eventually, Jerome recovered. His calming, calculated breaths, as though he'd simply gone for a short run, seemed to echo in the caravan, though there was no capacity to.

Bessie looked at him sympathetically when the worst of it was over. "If you need anything, don't be scared to ask me."

Jerome turned over, sitting on the floor, staring at the cabinet ahead of him. It was one of the rare times where he and Bessie could be eye-level. "Yeah," he said, understanding. "I just gotta learn to laugh again, I guess."

"One day," Bessie assured, rubbing his shoulder. "Only when you're ready. One day."

* * *

 **A/N: WHEW, now that the busiest time of the year is now over, let's get this thing started again, shall we? I see I got some new Followers. Hello, hello! Welcome.**

 **I really want to build what's coming next over the course of a couple in-story days. You know, to really help readers savour and breathe and absorb upcoming events. But unfortunately my hands are tied, the episode I'm referencing only spans two days, and we've already passed one of them. So while I'd like to stretch this story out much more, I need to follow canon. So I apologize if everything leading up to the ending seems rushed, it's not my fault, I'm just following the time span of the episode!**

 _Jeromeisminelol:_ D'ohhh, you're so sweet ^_^  
I will admit that lack of reviews take the wind out of my sails a little bit, because I really do look forward to what people have to say, what they think, their perspective on certain events that could open my mind to something even I didn't notice, all sorts of things! When there's crickets I worry whether maybe I'm not being entertaining enough and readers are getting bored. It's always hard to tell. But this is my promise: I'll never hold a story hostage, like, "im not gonna rite more until I get eleventy hundred revews!1!1!". This is still going to be completed, no matter what. I certainly wouldn't mind more reviews, I won't lie. But you gotta take what you can get, reviews come by so fleetingly on this website. I grab onto whatever ones I get and hold on for dear life! I am SO grateful whenever I see that notification, I flip for joy!  
Reviews are my author food, and when they get scarce, I have the potential to starve creatively. Alas, I cannot make readers do anything they don't want to do, so it is out of my hands.  
For the meantime, this site will be the only place I upload, but thanks for the heads up.  
Thanks a bunch for your continued support of this story! I'm thrilled that you are enjoying yourself!  
And also my continued gratitude to those who have reviewed and/or those who are reading this now!


	8. A Hundred Pieces

Jerome didn't marinate in his melancholy for long. Pushing himself forward, he rose with aimless purpose, side-stepping Bessie who was still on bended knee. She followed him over her shoulder, watching as he traveled to the caravan's other end where a messy haystack pile of clothes were lying in the doorway of the dark bedroom, blocking the entryway. That wasn't his destination, however. He stopped in front of the coatrack beside the main entrance, looking at his measly wool coat hanging on one of the hooks. He almost seemed antsy, maybe confused. His mind was sure to be a terrible mess right now. Taking charge was no longer in Bessie's hands.

Jerome finally acknowledged her after a few seconds in which he seemed to be thinking. "Could we just...go somewhere?" he asked, like he wasn't even really sure himself.

"Go somewhere?" Bessie got up onto her feet.

Jerome nodded. "I think...I think I need to get away for a little bit. From here. My mother's presence is still thick." His eyes roved the entirety of his home. "Even her perfume is still lingering from yesterday." Taking his coat, he'd already draped it over himself, slipping his arms through the sleeves before Bessie answered.

"We can do that," she said accommodatingly. "We can definitely do that. Where to?" Whatever Jerome wanted, she was willing to follow.

"Dunno. Just outside." He finished fastening his coat's old-fashioned buttons.

Bessie nodded her okay. Going outside was a more than reasonable request. Coming to meet him, she waited for him to leave the caravan first, but he was stopped in the open doorway, looking out at the grassy fairground. He wasn't leaving.

A drawn-out pause lingered. Jerome rapidly blinked to dispel forming tears, licking his lips in thought. "You know what's the one thing I need right now?" he said all of a sudden. "Not sympathy cards. Not apologies. Not pity. What I need most of all, in this whole world right now, is a friend."

Bessie didn't know how to respond. She wasn't so indulgent as to think he was specifically referring to her at that moment, rather that he was speaking in general terms. Whether or not Bessie fit the bill was, in her opinion, still to be determined. But it was a role she was willing to live up to, and she would prove it, too. "I can be that for you, if that's what you want," she reassured him.

Jerome nodded, looking down at his fiddling fingers. "You always have been, Bess. Thanks." He finally descended the stairs, out into the fresh, late morning air, and Bessie followed.

"Have you eaten anything?" she asked.

"Not today." Jerome feigned an aloof shrug that gave the impression he couldn't possibly imagine the reason why. "Not much appetite, I guess." But his pain telegraphed loud and clear.

This willingness to talk was a positive sign, if there were any to be had. Bessie didn't want him to close off, she wanted to keep this line of communication open. And the only way to keep the line open was to continue to be the support he wanted and not what everyone thought he needed. Despite her fear of the responsibility, to walk an even finer line than her tightropes could ever be, she knew she needed to do this. Jerome was talking to her without barriers, laid bare and at his most vulnerable. She couldn't just pass off such a delicate state of balance into someone else's hands and be done with him until enough time passed. Even if she didn't have much experience with comforting those left behind by death, she was wise enough to know that pulling a disappearing act wasn't the proper thing to do.

"Come on," she said, nodding her head in the direction she wanted to go. "The cafeteria might still have breakfast going."

They fell into silent agreement about their destination and walked. Bessie lagged one and a half steps behind for most of that time; near enough to be in his peripheral but out of focus enough to sneak glances and check on him every once in a while. Jerome returned not a single one, either because he didn't catch her or he just didn't find her intrusive enough to bother. He was very much in his own lonely mind, and Bessie's condolences could not telepathically penetrate his skull, and so she was left to merely fall in step with him.

Memories were trigger-happy phenomena. It is said that your life flashes before your eyes preceding near-death. While Bessie had never experienced her life flash before her eyes, memories involving Jerome through her perspective chose that day to pop in and out. One could say Jerome was experiencing the death of his old self in a way, and those flashes of the past were transferring to Bessie. Looking at him, she couldn't stop recalling the day they first met and how it could have possibly all ended up in this moment right now. Not everything was intact, blank spots were abound, they had both been so little at the time, but a couple things still stuck all these years. Likely their first interaction would have been lost to time had it not been for one particular trait of his that stood out to her.

In fact, their current destination was the spot where they'd met all those years ago.

The Strunas had been officially integrated for weeks before Bessie even knew of Jerome's existence. He was just so shy, and still retained some of that today. Bessie wandered away from her parents to the cafeteria stairs to get a closer look at the other children who were playing outside. Jerome happened to be peeking through the stair railings on ground level. Bessie's family, being the new arrivals, were a curiosity, like an exhibit at the zoo, and thus he kept his distance. He was five to Bessie's four.

Recollection was difficult at that primordial age where memory went in and out, shaping itself, finally forming enough to understand and make sense of the world, but the thing that Bessie could never forget was the first time she laid eyes on his hair. She'd never seen a color like it in her life at that point, and truly she'd never been able to find a natural match in the wild since, besides those who gained some assistance from a drugstore bottle. Even the first question she'd ever asked him had nothing to do with a proper introduction.

"Why your hair like that?" she said slowly, enunciating each word. Her parents had explained to her multiple times during their move that these people would only speak English and not Slovene, so she had to take what little bits she knew and hope it was correct. English was very hard and unnatural to say and felt strange on her tongue.

Jerome had mistaken the question for an insult and got flustered and squirmy. He planted his hands flat on his scalp to hide his red hair.

"I...I was born with it," he answered as defensively as he could, but it was weak against what must have been an instinct to cry.

Bessie recalled being in such awe. A color like that was just as insane as if someone said they were born with blue hair.

"Why you cover?" she said, struggling with the proper phrasing, miming the motion as back-up just in case. It truly baffled her why he put his hands on his head. Only in hindsight, many years later, could she interpret Jerome's hesitancy as a misunderstanding. "No," she said as a firm instruction. She plodded down the three steps and stood on the tips of her toes to reach the peak of Jerome's head. "Take hands off."

Jerome was her first exposure to a redhead, and thus, she considered him the most special kid in the entire circus. He was so unique that she was sure all of the other children were in just as much awe as she was and considered him popular. It took a while, but Bessie eventually learned that there was no trait hierarchy. The others didn't treat him as anything other than just another kid. Age was the biggest factor in the hierarchy, something that John's older brothers and Marko Abramov took seriously. Bessie always heard of playgrounds during recess at regular, stationary schools around the country, and she supposed her childhood experiences were close to something like that.

Nevertheless, Bessie remained impressed with his red hair for a while. She even learned an alternate English word for it—ginger. She had nothing like that. Perhaps her swamp-colored green eyes were a little less common than average, but that was just eye color, she didn't care about that. She would have happily traded them for Jerome's luminous hair in a heartbeat.

Jerome didn't even properly introduce himself back then either. For a while, Bessie just thought of him as the kid with the orange hair, and that's how she referred to him to everyone else. He had said 'Jerome' a couple times and she didn't realize it was actually his name until many days later when he reiterated it by pointing to himself and saying it over and over, because she didn't seem to pick up on it.

A four year old's vocabulary was limited enough. Add a second language on top and communication understandably got a little more difficult. Luckily, children were surprisingly adept at circumventing such cultural barriers somehow, given their universal need to play and gravitate towards other kids their age, no matter what. Mary welcomed her into her girls group, the Paisley twins wanted to show her the hole they'd dug (and even showed their dirty hands to prove it), and the Cubbins siblings, a family who had long since moved on from Haly's Circus, tried to give an impromptu tour.

Though the other children had less scholarly patience than her tutors and got frustrated with Bessie's language barrier a lot of the time, their constant conversating helped her learn English faster along the way. A lot of pointing and pantomime went far in those days. She wasn't the first outlander to drop into their midst, and she certainly would not be the last. Studying English grammatically was one thing, but hearing it spoken in everyday context was another, and both helped in their own way.

These days it was the other way around—English was her primary language since Slovene didn't have very many opportunities to continue to grow, and her accent disappeared over time. Slovene wasn't completely eliminated from her vocabulary, she could still get by if the conversation was kept mostly to the basics, but if it weren't for her parents keeping it alive she would have retained a lot less. The transition from Slovene to English full-time was not long-lived, maybe spanning a couple years a long time ago, so nobody really brought it up these days. By age six she spoke fluently.

There was another reason why Bessie held Jerome in such lifelong high regard. Back in those days, he corrected her wording in the same easygoing, patient tone everytime, no matter how many times she had to be told. He never made her feel bad for messing up. Most of the other kids would laugh whenever she uttered strange verbal mistakes or word mix-ups. They weren't mean-spirited, they were just children, they had no real understanding of their actions and thought she was laughing along with them, but Bessie did feel discouraged whenever it happened. She grew to love the circus kids, and they grew to love her, but they didn't seem to understand that she was trying really, really hard to speak like them. When they laughed, the effort felt unappreciated. Jerome seemed to understand, though. Bessie never forgot that, and still fondly credited him for it to this day.

Bessie and Jerome also shared a unique distinction within Haly's Circus: they were the only children born as only children. Perhaps that was one of the reasons that automatically caused them to gravitate towards eachother, but Bessie preferred thinking their respective countenances just clicked somehow. They weren't too boisterous. They weren't too loud.

The portable cafeteria popped into view after one more turn and Bessie's mind ceased swimming in the rivers of recollection. They both entered.

Mario Rossetti lifted his head at the sound and waved with his dish towel, smiling at them in greeting behind the serving counter. He then threw the towel over his shoulder because he needed two hands to transport a crumb-smeared stainless steel tray to the backroom.

"Hey, you didn't get yourself that drink," Bessie said helpfully, pointing to the double rows of mugs on the counter.

Jerome took one silently. Instead of pouring himself some water from the iced pitcher nearby, or the coffee machine, he just turned it it over again and again in his hands. Bessie recognized this as his thoughts being very far away. She prepared herself for the moment when he'd eventually come back to Earth.

Just as she was about to ask if he wanted anything—and she was even ready to fetch whatever he wanted—he spoke. "She's not here anymore..."

Uh oh.

Bessie tried to prepare herself for this moment. She thought she would have confronted it already when she entered his font door not even ten minutes ago, but he wasn't ready to talk about it then. Now, something seemed to be brewing, something he needed to let out. Physical grief sometimes manifested in a spontaneous nature, that was just the reality of things, and Bessie had to accept it.

"I know," she responded sympathetically. Her nod was heavy. "I know."

Jerome rubbed his fingers absently over the mug's glazed surface, eyes concentrated in a hundred-yard stare. "So full of life one day, and then just...gone the next."

One of the adults would have been better suited for this. No matter how much Bessie's words of comfort wanted release, she couldn't sort them into coherence. They were messy, in bundles, tumbling on top of eachother, disappearing and reappearing. Honing in on one single clear sentence was like grasping water. What was worse than all of that, however, was that none, not one word, could ever console or mend Jerome's fractured heart. This was his _mother_. An image of Bessie's own mother came to mind, and she couldn't even bear thinking further on that train of thought. To even just imagine such a thing was paralyzing.

Jerome stopped rotated the mug. His eyes narrowed and his knuckles were whitening.

Bessie thought it best to say something at this moment. "If you want to go back home, I can walk you there."

Jerome didn't seem to acknowledge her. He made no indication he'd even absorbed what she said. "Fragile...so fragile this all is..."

"Maybe you're not quite ready to step out yet. That's okay, there's no shame in it. We can go right now if you want. We can—"

"How can I go home when there's no home _TO GO TO!"_ With a monstrous rotation of his arm, Jerome pitched the mug at the floor.

The cup exploded on impact. Pieces launched, scattering from the smash point.

Bessie flinched, her body even going as far as to rattle then stiffen. Jerome's mood change happened so suddenly that she stood stock-still in its aftermath, speculating if what she just witnessed truly happened, stunned as though his words were a whip crack to her face.

A deep quiet followed. Invisible roots in her feet kept her grounded. She fought to keep stationary and unshakeable. The volume of the shattering mug pricked her eardrums, but it didn't affect her so much as hearing Jerome raise his voice in such a manner so seldom heard.

"Reacting with anger is normal," she said in forced calm, flashing her palm to show she meant no offense. She'd heard that once about grief. Anger made sense. He was acting out his tumultuous feelings, and she needed to let him.

Jerome's turned on her and she was nearly taken aback at the burn of his stare. His eyes flitted busily as he watched her. In a few seconds, though, the tightness loosened and a deep awareness was emerging.

"Oh my God," he said quietly. He looked over the speckled mess littered at their feet, speaking faster the more he took it all in. "Bessie, I'm so sorry. I don't know what came over me. I'm so sorry, I'm so, so—"

Bessie took his hands away from the shards. "No, no, don't be sorry. It's okay. It's okay," she replied just as breathlessly, heart still thumping wildly from her moment of dreadful surprise. "Don't touch anything, don't cut yourself, I'll take care of it."

"I scared you," he fretted, regretful. "I didn't—I didn't mean-"

"You didn't scare me," she assured calmly, her hammering heart making a liar out of her. "I was just...startled. That's all. But it doesn't matter now. Stand back here, please." She fetched a handbroom and dustpan hanging from a hook nearby. Blocking Jerome with her body so that he wouldn't do it himself, she bent down and swept up the battlefield of ceramic chips and pieces, gathering them into the dustpan. "See? It's just a mug. You didn't hurt anyone."

Rising and looking for the trash bin, she almost missed what he said next.

"Are you scared of me?" he said from behind her.

"No," she said quickly, letting no hesitation cast doubt on her answer, finally finding the trash bin just a couple feet away. "Never." She dumped the clinking contents in, tapping the pan against the edge to make sure nothing of the incident was left behind. Out of sight, out of mind.

Jerome didn't follow up with his question, and she was concerned that perhaps he didn't believe her. Turning to go hang the dustpan back on the wall and add more to her statement, she noticed Jerome looking elsewhere.

Mr. Cicero, who must have entered unseen during the small commotion, was coming towards the two, aided by his cane. Had he heard what just happened? Bessie hoped not, she didn't want Jerome to feel embarrassed over an audience witnessing his short-lived, exceptionally rare temper spike.

"Jerome," Mr. Cicero greeted. He acknowledged Bessie with a nod to the ceiling, as he could not see her. He heard her voice, it was not concerning at all that he somehow knew she was there too. "If I could interrupt you and Miss Struna here."

Despite his deep-set quirks and personable oddities, Cicero was a product of his era and used everyone's names respectfully as if they were important people with important things to do. Even the young set.

Jerome turned to Bessie apprehensively as if asking her permission. "Um, I mean, if it's okay with Bessie."

Bessie wasn't keen on their time being cut short, but she couldn't deny Mr. Cicero, nor protest. As an adult, he held more clout. Surely he had more important, even wiser, words to give Jerome than Bessie could give in weeks. She wanted more of a chance, but her time was up, and truly, she wasn't any more important than anyone else who wanted to speak to Jerome.

"Absolutely," she said. "Yes. Go ahead, Mr. Cicero."

"Thank you. Come with me to my caravan, Jerome," said Mr. Cicero, putting a hand on the boy's shoulder. "We will talk."

"Okay. Um..." Jerome turned to Bessie. "I'll see you later," he said, sounding apologetic.

Bessie nodded, stepping aside for the two to pass. They left together, and she now felt empty and unfulfilled with Jerome gone. It felt as though their time had just started and she had really wanted to make a concerted effort. He wouldn't be 'fixed' after a few exchanged pleasantries, she knew this, and it would be gravely misguided of her to think so. Recovery was not the goal. That was an impossible task, nobody recovered from bereavement. But helping the healing process, however slow as it may come, was what she sought to do.

Mario either did not hear the mug shattering during his time in the backroom, or had heard so many dishes break over the years that they no longer made a sound in his ears. He returned, serving up the last lukewarm pancakes and sausages before lunchtime started, so Bessie got a few of those on a plate and ate alone at a two person table. The place was sparse. Only Mr. Paisley, the circus's chief lighting technician, was sitting there at a table in the far corner, with a cup of coffee, reading the newspaper.

* * *

 **A/N: D'aww, thanks for the review turn-out everyone. You're all very sweet ^_^**

 _Jeromeisminelol_ \- Thank you! Yeah, it's pretty much my story's worst-kept secret that Jerome killed his mom, we all saw the episode, but hopefully everyone's enjoying the journey to get there.


	9. Shed Skin

After Bessie's breakfast in solitude concluded, she recalled what she had intended to do that morning before visiting Jerome. Obviously his well-being was more important and she tended to that first, but now that he was no longer around, she needed to occupy her time and settle down her complicated, disorganzied thoughts until then. Lila Valeska circled her mind for every minute Bessie was awake. Just when she had respite for tens of seconds, she'd fleetingly wonder why her body felt so emotionally tired and exhausted, and that's when Lila would come right back.

Bessie sighed heavily as she brought her syrup-streaked plate up to the dirty dish counter. She thanked Mario—to which he told her to keep her head up and stay strong—and left the cafeteria.

Days ago, the weather still felt like only the dying days of summer; a seasonal change was imminent, but the air was still pleasant and warm. Ms. Valeska's death seemed to be connected and thus accelerated autumn's process. The change was likely only in Bessie's mind, but she could have sworn the grass was yellower, the clouds gloomier, and the sun dimmer. The practice tent was never far, but there was weight added to everything physical Bessie did today. Maybe it wasn't a good idea to go today. She wasn't really going to hone her skill, after all, she was just going for a distraction, something to get lost in.

She still kept going anyway. Routine felt like the only absolute left in the world right now, the only thing that would not dissolve and leave her forever.

Jerome's caravan was coming up. She needed to pass it on the way, and she wished regrettably that she had chosen the path of more resistance if it meant not being reminded of every awful thing that happened in the last twenty-four hours.

Purposely avoiding the Valeska caravan in her sights, she walked on. Thinking about that pile of clothes she saw in his home, however, slowed her down. She considered taking a few baskets and washing them for him. Taking that chore off his hands wouldn't be too hard. When people grieved, it was a considerate expectation of others to make everyday life just a little easier so that the ones in mourning could focus on more important things. Bessie couldn't cook all that well. Laundry, though, was something she could definitely do.

It was just a thought. But the more she continued walking and soon overtook the Valeska caravan, the stronger the inclination became and the better it sounded, until she stopped all together. She was sure he wouldn't mind.

The caravan was still well within sight, she didn't travel far, so she doubled back. Though the trailer had not changed physically overnight, it now gave off the appearance of a sad, lonely little hovel of a home due to affiliation. A look of fresh abandonment seemed to overtake its once decent atmosphere, even if it still housed two tenants.

Bessie noticed something off-kilter about the front door the closer she got. The perspective was off somehow. Arriving at the steps, she found out why. The door was open a crack, offering a peek only to black inside. Bessie tried hard to remember if it was him or her who forgot to close it properly and she felt apologetic if it had been her. It couldn't have been Jerome at home already, he had gone with Mr. Cicero. Even though Bessie had a meal between, that didn't seem like a long time.

"Jerome?" she called.

No answer returned. After an anticipative pause, clearly nobody was going to reply.

A long dark shape in the waning grass near the tires wedged in the caravan's underbelly hooked Bessie's attention. Glancing on reflex, she gasped and nearly fell over when her feet tangled reeling back.

Sheba was staring Bessie in the eye, partially curled on the ground, her forked tongue flickering, aware of the girl's presence even before she could be spotted.

Bessie held out her hands placatingly, stiff from her frozen nerves. Usually that hand signal worked on dogs, but she had no idea what to do with a boa constrictor. "S-Stay. Stay," she coached Sheba.

An uncaged Sheba loose inside the caravan was one thing. Bessie could just close the front door and let Jerome easily deal with her when he got back, but if the snake was uncaged outdoors and Bessie left for assistance, Sheba will have slithered away by then. Bessie didn't want heartbreak on top of another. Jerome losing his mother and then subsequently their pet would be more devastation than he could handle.

Bessie swallowed hard. She didn't want to do it. She _really_ didn't want to do it...

Sheba head was raised. She watched Bessie a couple moments more, tongue testing the air a few more times. Uninterested by the precedings any further, Sheba turned her head to the circus, away from Bessie, and slithered indifferently towards that direction, uncoiling her long, diamond-patterned body.

Bessie looked around for anybody else to call, but just like earlier, the grounds were more empty than normal. Biting her lip so hard as to nearly puncture it, she bided her time, bouncing on the balls of her feet nervously. Just when she managed to conjure a small burst of daring, it puttered out and she held back. Her silent prayers for a last-second savior to materialize from the fairground went unheeded.

 _Get it over with, get it over with. NOW!_ Bessie blanked her mind. It was the only way she could get through this. In a few steps, she caught up with the snake. She knew so little of boa constrictors. All she had was her observances of how the Valeskas handled her, and so, she tried to mimic their exact movements from memory.

Grimacing so badly that her jaw felt like it would dislocate, Bessie did her best to wrap her spindly fingers over the thick trunk of a body. Taking the head first was the most intimidating, but necessary part. If Bessie had any choice, the head would be the last part she'd ever want to place her hands, but if not restrained, Sheba could potentially be poised, and free, to attack whatever was grabbing her from behind.

Hesitating a couple seconds, moaning quietly, Bessie finally bent, gripping Sheba just a couple inches below the head to keep her jaws forward. Sheba stiffened, but did nothing to wiggle, writhe, or escape. Though Bessie's fear was easy to get out of hand and accidentally tighten her fingers, she kept aware to keep her hold solid but gentle. No doubt that Sheba wouldn't take kindly to practically being strangled.

Good enough to carry on, Bessie held Sheba at arms length, trying to edge the head away, and then wrapped her other hand over the massive midsection. Sheba was more solid and heavier than anticipated. Bessie got terrible flashes in her mind of the snake snapping her jaws right for Bessie's face. She felt like she could dodge a bullet for how tense and wound up she was in preparation. Despite also being made of flesh and blood, Sheba's body wasn't offering much heat. Not cold, but not warm either. Typical of reptilian kind, but it still felt unnatural to Bessie in the sense that she'd never owned a pet that couldn't produce it's own body heat.

Bessie almost broke into a run, but she didn't want to jostle and agitate Sheba into a frenzy. It was agony for every extra second that Sheba remained in her arms, but Bessie put one foot in front of the other, moderate but never stopping. Climbing the steps, she bumped the door open with her backside and headed straight for the tank with the heat lamp still switched on over it.

"Okay, okay, inside now, ew, ew, ew, ew," Bessie motor-mouthed under her breath. Maybe Sheba would react aversely to a louder voice, Bessie didn't know, and she wasn't going to risk raising the volume to anything above a stage whisper.

A clang of panic vibrated in her chest. The snake's heavy body had started curling around her arm. Jerome told her once that it was because of the warmth in human bodies, but that did nothing to change Bessie's mind. Setting the snake back into her cage, shaking off the last of her tail—which briefly brought the question to her mind, where did the head end and the tail begin on a snake?—she snapped shut the cage a little too hard and clicked in the lock.

Bessie gulped in her first free breath in over a minute. Sheba coiled and relaxed over the log inside her glass enclosure, flickering her tongue a couple times, but seemingly content. Though no slimy residue was left behind, Bessie's hands still felt dirty. Or maybe it was just the need to shake off Sheba's texture and feel from her skin, but either way, the snake's presence still tingled in her palms. Jerome always told her that snakes were not slimy, the scales just made it look so, but Bessie wasn't so keen on technicalities right now. Unable to touch anything afterward, she hurried to the sink tap and gave her hands a short rinse.

Drying her hands on a dish towel hanging from the cupboard underneath, she shivered to shake off the ordeal. She should just take the clothes and leave. She journeyed across the lane to the other end where the clothes pile was, trying to avoid an eyeline with Sheba's tank in the middle of it all. Swiftly passing, Bessie arrived on the other side. A small, black clasp of flesh-toned makeup was sitting on the counter and open. This must have been the make-up Oksana had given Jerome to hide his black-eye. It was already developing a dent in the center for how vigorously it had been used.

The messy pile of clothes was just as it was before. Bessie placed her hands on her hips, giving it a once over. It shouldn't have been too hard to take a few sweaters at first. Making to grab a black one right off the top to begin, patterned dots on a different garment grabbed her attention. Bessie blinked, thinking sun spots were still in her eyes, leading her imagine colors that weren't there. But the pattern didn't change or spin. Bessie leaned sideways to see better. A grey, wrinkled cardigan laid there, just out of sight. The darkened spots dotting it were not a manufacturing pattern, they were too lawless and concentrated in certain areas to be. They were stains, almost like flicked paint, with just a few larger blots.

Bessie could hardly make colors out, every light in the caravan was off except for Sheba's heat lamp distantly casting minor, stretched illumination, but the stains were definitely dark enough to stand out on the heather grey base. Upon further inspection she uncovered a new, faded color just to the right of the heart.

A crusted yellow stain, like that of dried mustard.

"What are you doing here, Bess?"

Bessie's soprano gasp was so sharp that she felt it slice her throat. She turned, nearly giving herself whiplash.

Jerome had come home.

He stood there in the doorway. Because of the darkness within the caravan, the light of the outdoors behind him was dazzling, outlining him in a sort of aura.

His voice had been soft and inquiring, but Bessie tried to explain hastily what she was doing. She didn't want him to think she was encroaching on his privacy. "Jerome, I'm sorry! Sh-Sheba, she got out—she got loose and-and no one was around so I tried—I brought her inside and I thought—I wanted to make things easier for you, the door was left open, so I was going to help you wash these. I'm sorry if I shouldn't have walked in without you being here, I—"

While she talked, he studied her neutrally, nodding blankly every once in a while. That bass line thump on Bessie heartstrings kept pounding. She quickened the tempo of her words, as though Jerome would cut her off at any moment and refuse to hear anymore. But he didn't. He waited her out patiently.

Bessie finished, maybe a little winded. It was a silly thing, but her adrenaline got going after being startled, and the situation did look like she was snooping around for whatever reason.

Jerome held his elbows and nodded again. "Well," he said finally, "far be it from me to get mad at you for trying to do something nice for me." He smiled. "No hard feelings."

Bessie relaxed. She thought back to the mug incident earlier. That had been an unpredictable burst of anger, and she wasn't quite sure if he was liable to be set off again. She didn't want to give him a reason to, his psyche must have been already so wrung out and exhausted, she didn't want to be seen negatively in his eyes. She only wanted to help.

"Wait a second. You touched Sheba?" said Jerome, a cheeky half-smile appearing. He hadn't had occasion to wear one in a while.

"Carried her, actually." Bessie tried to keep her spine from jellifying at the memory. "From outside to here."

"Well, look at you," Jerome commended. He looked over his shoulder at Sheba in her tank. "I thought you of all people would have gotten somebody else to take care of it."

"Nobody was around, and if I left she might have been gone by the time I got back."

Jerome left Bessie temporarily to stand in front of Sheba's case, bending to inspect his pet through the glass, meeting her stare with none of the fear Bessie kept. "Well, she doesn't look at all upset," he said. "Good job, Bess. Thank you for taking care of her when I wasn't around. I know it must have been hard for you."

Now felt like as good a moment as any to ask. "Jerome?" Bessie said with trepidation.

"Hm?"

"Your sweater." She pointed to the unseen side of the small hill of clothes. Jerome definitely wore this the other night. "Is that...blood?"

Jerome stopped what he was doing. He faced her. Rising from his knees, he came over. Bessie backed into a corner to give him space to investigate for himself. The area narrowed in this particular side. It was so narrow that Jerome's body blocked her completely, not even giving up enough leeway for her to go around.

"You didn't hurt yourself, did you?" Bessie asked, concerned. "That night when we sat to watch the tent go up?" The night when she had cried over John, she recalled in embarrassment.

Jerome's eyes roved the pile, finding the offending cardigan. "Oh, that." He shrugged boredly. "Just a nosebleed."

"Nosebleed?" Bessie looked over the stains. Some spots were drips and drops, others were smears, and some were flecked. He had to have been catering to the bleeding for several minutes to have made such a mess. The outflow must have been severe. She thought back unpleasantly to the well-dressed stranger whom Ms. Valeska brought to her trailer back in Blüdhaven—the man who gave Jerome his black eye. "Did somebody do this to you?"

"No, no, nothing like that," Jerome assured, shaking his head. "Actually, this happened the morning after that night. That was the reason why I told you I wasn't feeling well when you came to visit. It was just one of those random things you wake up with. I took care of it." He smiled down at her. "You don't have to worry about me, Bess."

Bessie nodded in acceptance. She was no stranger to utterly random nosebleeds once in a blue moon, either. "Okay," she said hesitantly. "But you would tell me if something like that was going on, right?"

"Absolutely. Cross my heart."

Bessie nodded, content that her concerns could be put to rest. She'd overreacted to the discovery.

Seemingly all was patched between them. Jerome returned to Sheba. He smiled down at her, tapping her enclosure softly for her attention. He noticed Bessie watching, too.

"One day, Bess, I'll get you to wear Sheba like a scarf."

* * *

 **A/N: I just broke 2,000 views on this story recently. Thank you to all the readers!**

 **In my original notes, Bessie was actually supposed to step inside the caravan and passively mistake the log in Sheba's tank as the snake itself, and that's when Sheba surprises her by being loose. But then I thought that, because Bessie's is nearly paralyzed in fear by Sheba, she subsequently wouldn't return the snake back into the tank, she would just leave the caravan and shut the front door to keep Sheba inside, letting Jerome take care of her later.**  
 **But I needed things to go in a particular way, so I had to rewrite events to happen as they did in this chapter. I hope it was a change for the better.**

 _Jeromeisminelol_ \- I definitely intend for the case to be one of the two, but I can't say which.  
Not even ONE wrong thing? Wow, that's high praise.

 _Guest_ \- Enchanting writing style? Ooooo! How nice of you to say! :D Thanks a lot! I hope I'll able to continue to be good enough to keep you around until the finale.


	10. Learn To Laugh

The air was too stifling, and it wasn't any one thing's fault. Sheba. The blood on Jerome's sweater. Lila Valeska's lingering presence. They created a thick, discomforting atmosphere that Bessie wanted to remove herself from, but she didn't want to be rude to Jerome and say so.

Non-offensively as she could, Bessie steered sidelong and squeezed by him. The front door was still left open and the outdoors beyond beckoned her. "I promise I'll come by later tonight to pick up the laundry," she said. "It was too soon to come here, I'm sorry." She hoped Jerome would not question why only later when she came here purposely for that reason just now. She didn't think she could come up with a good enough lie to combat that.

Jerome looked over his shoulder at her. "You don't have to worry about that," he said kindly. "I'll take care of it eventually."

"No, no, I really want to."

"It won't go anywhere."

"You have so much to deal with right now, please, let me."

Jerome took pause. Finally, he rose from his crouch to properly face her, though non-confrontational. "Please, Bess. You've gone out of your way enough, and I can't ask anymore of you."

"But you're not asking. I offered."

"I know. And thank you. But I know you don't want to be here right now, and frankly, neither do I. For a little while, at least."

Bessie's mouth bobbled, but she was struck mute. Had she really been that obvious? Shame warmed her skin. She'd been trying so hard to be as transparently sympathetic as she was on the inside, but in doing that, perhaps her other feelings had also used that opening to manifest in her body language and on her face.

"I still want to," she said, affirmative. Her personal desires and needs were in the back-seat now.

Jerome half-smiled. Bessie noted how fatigued he looked. He must have not slept all night. Perhaps that was the reason why he wasn't fighting for isolation and peace and quiet right now. His mind hadn't caught up yet. He carried himself with an even dreamier air than he normally did. Maybe he had concluded in his sleep-deprived state that this was all just a bad nightmare and that he was going to wake up any minute now. Even as much as even Bessie hated to accept the truth, however, this was all very painfully real, and she wouldn't have been surprised at all to discover that this was how Jerome's mind was dealing with it. She didn't think she would ever be strong enough to witness the exact moment when Jerome finally awoke from his perceived waking dream to find the same result lying before his eyes.

"Let's not argue about it right now," said Jerome.

Bessie was at least willing to compromise with that. For now. "Yes," she agreed, nodding. "There's more important things going on right now, yes."

Perhaps burying herself into a chore was her own way of coping. She heard it said that people chose different ways, some being more non-typical than others, to configurate mourning. Perhaps that was hers.

"I'll...I'll come visit you later," Bessie said, breaking the silence that had extended its stay between them. She never broke her eyeline, she wanted him to know she meant it without saying so. Sometimes conviction portrayed through the eyes spoke louder than words.

"Where are you going?"

"I..." It occurred to Bessie just how dismissive her intentions must have looked to Jerome. Here he was, without his mother, and she was thinking some tightrope walking was a better use of her time. "I just...need some time to process things, I guess. The only way I know how to do that is to just get lost in my tightrope." She held her elbow, ashamed that she was putting herself first before Jerome. As soon as the words left her mouth, she regretted them terribly. The unintentional apathy associated with them never occurred to her until she finally put them out there. "Wait, I didn't—I didn't mean it like that, Jerome, I—"

"I'll come with you."

Bessie wavered. "No, no, you need to—" She trailed. There was something very off about this emerging dynamic. She was telling him what to do, how to feel, how he should be acting. She rearranged her thought process. "You can stay home if that is what you really want. If you need alone time, I can give you that, anything you need."

"I'd rather be with you."

Bessie's soft protests were subdued.

He'd struck a chord. Bessie quietly cleared her throat, not from awkwardness, but rather from a tenderness brought on by Jerome's words—he would have rather chosen her than the alternate option of solitude. Not that that was evidence of Bessie's virtue as an engaging person. It could have simply meant that Jerome preferred mostly anybody's company over being alone and Bessie was the nearest candidate.

Nonetheless, she took his request as a responsibility. Jerome made his decision and she would oblige.

"Okay," she said.

Leaving the trailer together, Bessie in the lead while Jerome closed the door behind them, he trailed behind, intent on following her wherever she went.

The Big Top wasn't normally in use at this early hour. Dress rehearsals were usually scheduled for the afternoon, but morning wasn't even officially over yet. That made the Big Top a preferable candidate to lay low. Jerome was likely a popular person today (for all the wrong reasons). Not that offering their sympathies made villains of everyone else. In fact, their consideration and sorrow were sure signs of their sense of humanity and ocean-deep empathy, something Bessie always believed of her circus family. One's hurt was the collective hurt of all. However, Jerome gave off unspoken signs that he didn't want reminding of what happened last night. At least not right now when the wound was as fresh as the minute it was inflicted, when he could still escape into that 'it's all just a dream' state of mind.

The Big Top's tightrope apparatus was still set-up from last night and would stay that way until Haly's Circus moved on, but Bessie wasn't going to walk it right now. That one wasn't for contemplating on. Aimless pondering was reserved for her practice line. Distraction from thirty feet high was not a good idea. Plus, she wasn't going to leave Jerome grounded and alone.

Bessie entered through the performer's entrance flap, holding it open for Jerome to follow. She had to blink sun spots out of her eyes as she transitioned from shining outdoors to the more subdued, artificially lit tent. Jerome walked side-by-side with her down the short tunnel to the black curtain hiding the center ring, and this time he held it aside for her.

They found they were not alone.

Three, but thankfully only three, acrobats were currently using the trapeze. This was not dress rehearsal, so they just wore their casual, neutral routine outfits and not the splashy colors of show night. One of the acrobats in particular was currently swinging from the bar, getting momentum going.

When it came to Bessie, though, she was taken by the pursuit of immensely more interesting matters. The tunnel wall seemed to have a chip in it's black paint. She touched the spot, lightly scratching at it with her fingernail to test its integrity. The curtain appeared to have a fraying seam at the opening slit, too.

All in all, Bessie was doing a very good job at pretending to not to see the acrobats at all.

However, her eyes could always find John Grayson, no matter the obstacle. Picking at the curtain string, twisting it around her finger in order to snap it off, her gaze flicked up, just for a millisecond, and just like that her brittle willpower was vanquished.

John was up there, waiting for his jump.

Tightrope walking would always be Bessie's love, but a small part of her longed to be John's partner up in the trapeze. The synchronization and the trust required within each other seemed like a beautiful thing. That brief sensation of flight when one acrobat let go of their only anchor and latched onto their partner before gravity caught up made her heart float just imagining it. She would have liked to try the trapeze, at least just once. Just for fulfillment of a fantasy, just to know what it was like.

However, she also accepted how unlikely that scenario would be. Just like her own job would be to John Grayson, her on the trapeze would be less fun and free and more frustrating to get right. They were both trained to make it look easy, and in that same vein they both knew just how intricate their art and technique really were. No, it really was best that they continued to reach the tent's heavens, but with Bessie staying more grounded with her footwork, and John soaring as though he owned wings.

"We can go somewhere else if it feels too crowded here," Bessie suggested.

"I'm fine here," assured Jerome.

Bessie almost wanted to ask if he was _absolutely_ sure, but that would hint an ulterior motive on her part, and so she left it alone. They emerged from the tunnel and leaned their backs against the containment wall circling the floor, separating the center ring from the stands. Jerome craned his head up to watch the few Graysons doing what they did best. Bessie was too busy picking at her fingernails to heed the impressive show, even for rehearsal standards, happening above.

A silent minute passed and Bessie still had yet to look up. She'd peeled for herself a rather stubborn hangnail and was now concentrating on fixing that. Jerome must have noticed. Reaching over, he placed his hand right over hers, pacifying what she was doing. She stalled her fidgeting.

"Something bothering you?" he said.

"No, no, nothing."

He retracted, satisfied that Bessie wouldn't resume when he let go. "You sure? You haven't said a word since we got here."

"I haven't? I'm sorry," she said, meaning it.

"You don't have to be sorry," he said kindly. "I was just wondering."

Bessie finally looked up at Jerome and was met with his small smile, but in the midst of her preoccupation with her fingernails she'd failed to notice the three Graysons now on the ground, taking a break. In her mind's timeline they had practically transported to the ground, she thought they were still up in their trapeze. John was in side profile to her. He stood in a circle with his brother Alphonse and their uncle, using the towel slung around his neck to wipe his forehead. His brother and uncle were animated, discussing something among themselves. John wasn't saying anything, but he was involved. Little words were audible here or there, but there was no mistaking a very telling one that slipped through: "—Lila."

John must have felt like he was being watched because he absently glanced sidelong and double-taked when he noticed Jerome and Bessie standing there just a short distance away. "Hey, guys, come on," John murmured sharply to the two other Graysons, indicating with his head in Jerome's direction.

His brother and uncle looked, then instantly corked their conversation. Jerome's presence was an instant silencer today, wherever he went.

Everybody stilled in the awkward pause—the Graysons hoping that the subject of their small conference hadn't been overheard, and Bessie and Jerome pretending they hadn't heard it.

John was the first to do something about it. He nodded at his brother and uncle, then started walking over to Jerome and Bessie. Bessie shifted as if adjusting ill-fitting clothing and pretended she didn't notice his oncoming approach. Jerome was stoic, giving off the impression that if he did not initiate eye-contact then he would remain invisible. Discomfort made him shift his feet. Bessie could only assume that this was part of his avoidance technique; if other people approached and told him how sorry they were, over and over, then that solidified reality. He would begin to realize more and more with every condolence that his mother really was gone for good.

"Jerome," John greeted. Self-assured, sometimes even cocky, confidence was his default facial expression most every other day. So it was a humbling, rare sight to experience him so solemn, soft-spoken, and reserved here and now. "I can't imagine what you must be going through," he said. He clapped his hand on Jerome's shoulder and held it there, squeezing reassuringly, then encased Jerome in a strong, bracing hug. "Stay strong, brother. We'll all get through this together. We're with you."

"Thank you," said Jerome quietly, and he sounded like he really did mean it. Bessie suddenly felt like a trespasser in what should have been a personal extension of condolence, one which she should not have been a part of, and she now wished she'd had the tact to have given a couple feet of separation.

Jerome did not hug back, but as a show of his gratitude, he patted John on the back. John released in a timely manner, enough to get his sincerity across but not overextend his welcome, and squeezed Jerome's shoulder one more time, rocking it gently. "The Grayson doors are always open to you. Remember that."

Jerome nodded, head low. "Thank you for that," he said quietly. "It means a lot."

John smiled reassuringly. His considerate gaze shifted to Bessie. He hadn't forgotten or ignored she was in the vicinity and he acknowledged her with a tight, cheerless smile—more of an unintentional grimace to be more precise, given the grim occasion that brought the three to meet this way.

Bessie was as struck as if John's eyes were headlights in the dark. Her knees locked. The timing couldn't have been more disrespectful on her end, but her heart fluttered longingly against her will, a symptom of a crush that simply could not disappear. It was no one's fault, certainly not John's. Burying her body's automatic hormonal reaction in his presence was prudent for the situation, though, she needed to rise above it. She could not ever deny his charm and attractiveness, even in dire circumstances—the exhilaration that love caused had no off switch—but there was also a time and a place. This was a very serious matter, someone else had to come first right now, and Bessie knew she needed to store her habits and feelings for some other time that was certainly not now.

In response to John's acknowledgement of her, Bessie dipped her head. Their shared sympathy for the late Ms. Valeska was strong and likely reflected in her eyes.

John appeared as though he was about to follow-up and speak again, but his eyes refocused and he seemed to take notice of something behind Bessie. She looked over her shoulder.

Leo, having arrived from the sunny main entrance was closing the distance, Jerome fixed in his sight. The three waited him out respectfully.

"Hey, kid," Leo said heavily to Jerome when he'd caught up to them. "You got some time? If no one else minds, I'd like to talk to you for a bit, if that's okay."

"Of course, Mr. Baccardi," Jerome said. A consistent croak in his voice had been present ever since yesterday. It weighted everything he said with the sadness of the world.

Putting his hand on Jerome's shoulder, Leo smiled at John and Bessie as a promise that he'd return Jerome back to them soon, and steered Jerome to the waiting room tunnel, stopping just short of stepping past the black curtain.

Leo was a captivating, confident man who could pull off any look, any clothing, any style, but the one thing he did not wear well at all was sadness. It was striking how he almost looked like a completely different man without the trademark spark that made him the one and only Leo Baccardi. The luminescence in him and the confidence in his stride had died.

Now that they were alone, John didn't leave a long period of silence between he and Bessie.

"So, how are you, Bess?" he asked. Even his voice was softer than usual. It would have sounded very pleasant to her had it not been for the dark reason causing him to use it in the first place.

"Hm?"

"I mean, you know, how are you holding up?" John crossed his arms, not in a guarded manner, but rather in a conversational way—or in an attempt for one in the face of the dreary atmosphere, hovering from the knowledge they all shared of Lila. Or perhaps it was meant as a way to brace and prepare himself for the answer to that question.

Bessie breathed deeply through her nose. "It's...hard." That description came nowhere near how she really felt, but there was no other word she could use for it.

"It is," John agreed, nodding with that statement. "It really is. I just can't believe it."

Bessie stole a glance at Leo and Jerome. Leo was speaking compassionately, like a wise teacher to a student, but the sound could not reach her. Frankly, though, it was best it didn't. Leo's words were not meant for her ears.

John shifted, following her line of sight. "So how's he doing right now?"

Bessie had to think about that for a second. "It's not really any one thing, I think."

"Why isn't he at home?" John didn't say it as a demand, just as a curiosity. An oddity more like.

Bessie fidgeted as she thought about it, back to peeling her fingernail to vent her worry. She looked over her shoulder to seek Jerome one more time, concerned that he'd return to find they were discussing him behind his back. He seemed well out of earshot, though.

"To be honest," she said under her breath, leaning closer, still watching in case Leo let Jerome go early, "I don't think the brunt of it has hit just yet. Jerome is respondent and yet despondent at the same time. He answers you, but he's distant. I think he's just lost in some way, doesn't know where to go or what to think."

"No doubt, no doubt." John agreed. His chest expanded in a hefty sigh. "God, the poor guy," he said all in an exhale.

A small spark of forwardness ignited in Bessie. "I can't speak for Jerome, but what you said to him, that was very generous of you," she said appreciatively.

John looked in her eyes. "Of course, Bessie." Guilt descended over his face. "You know, I know things haven't been as strong between all of us kids recently, and now this happens and I suddenly realize just how old we've really gotten. How much time really slipped away from us."

Was he apologizing for the recent past?

"I believe that you can take care of him, Bessie. You're good at things like that."

Bessie gulped, overcome. The bashful warmth rising from her collar was unstoppable. Mashing her lips, she nodded, unable to meet his kind eyes, though she desperately wanted to.

"And I'm sorry I haven't told you that very often." He placed a hand on her shoulder. "After what happened to Lila last night, it kept me up all night. It's so dark to think of it this way, I know, but nobody expected her to be gone the next day, I don't want that to happen again to anybody. I don't want anyone to leave without knowing how much I care. I care a lot, even though I don't always act like it. I don't want this family to fall apart. This _whole_ family."

He squeezed and rubbed her shoulder. The spot warmed pleasantly on Bessie's skin and she felt comforted.

"Be careful out there, Bessie. Got it?"

The enduring presence of the unknown prowler who murdered Lila went unsaid, but John's message was clear.

Bessie nodded vigorously. "I promise."

John gave a gratified smile that ignited a fizzing tingle in Bessie's heart. "Good gir-"

" _Oh_ , so you decided to show your face, did you?!"

John and Bessie diverted their attention from each other. Alphonse, still right where John left him, was squaring up with the Big Top's new visitors who had just arrived: a couple of Lloyds.

"Now? Really?" griped John. His hands curled into fists at his sides. The chords in his wrists seemed to tense in preparation. "Maybe you should take Jerome away from here, Bessie. Things are about to get a little ugly, I think. Jerome doesn't need to hear these things about his mom."

"But I thought you guys were all under a strict verbal restraining order or something," said Bessie, not sure which member of the dueling families was more prudent to watch out for. Her gaze shifted between everybody like a nervous bird.

"We were." John scoffed. "Trust a Lloyd to dishonor a pact. Sorry, Bess, but I gotta go, I need to back up my brother."

Alphonse and Owen's insults got more heated the more they traded barbs and accusations. Owen's brother was already holding him back.

"You sure?" Bessie wasn't very confident about John's success rate.

He waved her off. "Totally. I've got this. Don't get involved, I'll take care of it."

"Okay," she said cautiously. "Um, I'll see you la—"

That was when Owen threw the first punch, right for Gustave Grayson's jaw. That single move sparked a retaliating frenzy.

"That coward!" barked John, and he took off.

Bessie's heart sank as she watched the building commotion. Her lips parted, a exclamation of protest sitting there, but there was no point, it wouldn't reach anybody who cared.

"Something happen?"

Bessie jolted. "Jerome! I'm sorry, how long have you been there?"

"Maybe half a minute. I didn't want to interrupt you and John."

Bessie put a hand on Jerome's arm as if she could somehow conceal the escalating riot in the center ring from him, but if she succeeded, Jerome had to be blind and deaf not to notice. Tensions were higher than ever now that both Graysons and Lloyds accused the other of Lila's death.

"Look, we should really get out of here," she said, using force to keep her voice steady. "This is out of hand." Bessie briefly tried to look for John, but he was buried somewhere in the froth.

When Jerome didn't move, Bessie clutched the lapels of his cardigan to keep his eyes on her. Her hands were at eye-level for how much taller he was than her. "This is horrible to watch, you don't have to see this. Come with me."

Jerome didn't even acknowledge she'd spoken, Bessie's words went unheeded. A leering, half-smile was slowly emerging on one side. He was looking past her, watching the fight unfold with a serene fascination, seemingly lost in some otherworldly landscape being created right before his eyes.

"You know, Bessie," he finally said languidly, "I like you. I'd like you even more if you'd _just_ — _learn_ —to _laugh_ more." He side-tipped his head. "Hm? How 'bout it?"

Bessie let go, her fingers retracting stiffly. She squinted. There was something very off about his face. It wasn't easy to decipher, but she soon discovered what it was. She always remembered how relaxed his features were. Now they were incredibly sharp. His eyes were alight. The corners of his mouth were creased by a smirk, and his brows were taut.

A grunt and a loud protest hooked Bessie's attention and on instinct she looked over her shoulder. John resurfaced in the melee, attempting to get in the middle to hold a Grayson and Lloyd apart. He seemed to be struggling, but Bessie had to trust what he'd said.

Turning back, Jerome's angled features had melted away, returning him to the doleful expression he wore by default, like the previous one was never there at all.

 _If_ it had ever been there at all.

She could blame her short stature for the off-center perspective that made her only think Jerome had produced such a strange, uncharacteristic face, but his quip about her laughing more came off as very blunt to her. There was nothing she could see that was funny about this situation. She feared that perhaps Jerome just had another lapse in which his heightened emotional state caused him to reply more abruptly than he initially intended. A brief flash of him smashing the mug earlier that morning crossed her mind, and she pitied him all over again. She needed to remove him from this environment, it was doing nothing but make things worse.

Though Jerome more or less opposed her desire to leave the tent before, Bessie really felt like she needed to insist on it this time. Encasing his hand in her own—to which he put up no resistance and instantly melded with her—she pulled him along with a forgiving tug as a means to guide him. His eyes remained observant towards the chaos going on in the center ring, but his legs moved along with Bessie and she never had to pull hard enough to cause him discomfort.

Clowns and technical personnel rushed in past Bessie and Jerome to help, but she never looked back.

* * *

 **A/N: I've done my calculations of how many chapters would potentially be left in this story (and didn't get ahead of myself this time and make that prediction on my first chapter like I usually do). I** _ **think**_ **there will be four, possibly five, chapters left. That's the plan, though I do tend to overshoot estimates all the time, but after compiling my story notes, I think four chapters to go is a pretty accurate estimation. So I'll go with that. We're cruising to the finale, folks! The day's not done yet. Like I said in another author's note, I could have gone just a little longer, but I'm bound by canonical timelines.**

 **I** _ **love**_ **hearing all your theories as to how you think things will turn out. Most unfortunately, due to such a span of differing predictions, I may not be able to please everybody with what will unfold, but I do love this kind of interaction with you guys and your enthusiasm! Your responses have been overwhelming, I just didn't expect this dedicated of a following, and I can't thank you all enough :D**

 _Jeromeisminelol_ \- Come again? You're saying this is your _favorite_ Gotham fanfic? Oh...oh my heart! It's... _feeling_! Wow. Considering the multitude of stories in the Gotham section of this site, you picking mine is so flattering. Thank you!  
As to whether Bessie is ever going to discover what Jerome did, I was about to answer that, but I feel like I've been giving too much away already. I gotta continue to keep the mystery alive! Even though I'm just bursting at the seams to spoil everything. But don't worry, you will find out the answer to that soon.


	11. We All Fall Down

Everybody's sanity was falling apart in front of Bessie's eyes and there was no junction switch she could grab to prevent this train collision. Lila's mysterious death was not the end, it was only a catalyst to something even bigger on the horizon. Her death was an omen that only predicted more to come.

Bessie didn't realize it until now, but she had been trying to tie all the unraveling strings back together by herself, even if all she wanted to do was fall apart with everyone else. She was Atlas trying to hold up the sky.

She didn't lead Jerome far, only around the corner, against the striped tarp. She released him and leaned on the siding, holding onto one of the tent's anchoring ropes while rubbing her cheek, at a loss for how to handle these new developments that were just piling onto eachother at mudslide rate.

"You okay, Bess?" said Jerome.

Bessie blinked and rattled her head, not realizing she'd spaced out. "Yeah," she said quickly, letting the rope go. She sniffed and squared her shoulders. "Yeah."

"You sure?"

Bessie was about to go along and answer truthfully, but then shook her head admonishingly to stop herself. "Jerome, wait, wait. This is all wrong. You're not supposed to be the one comforting _me_."

"But you're not fine."

"And neither are you." She worked that carefully out of her mouth to remove as much accusation as possible. This wasn't an interrogation. Far from it. Bessie didn't want Jerome to feel like he was under the lamp, or that there was even anything to implicate him of. Maybe he was expressing concern over her well-being only because he did not want to confront his own. "You don't have to put on an act around me, you know that, right?" she said.

Like a sliding dimmer switch, Jerome's eyes gradually blanked. His searched hers, flitting as he took in detail and filtered the information. Bessie grew concerned whether his silence was because he was trying to pull meaning from something that wasn't there.

"Only if that's how you really feel," Bessie clarified quickly. "No matter how brave you're trying to be, I won't think of you any different. I swear. Put me in a courtroom, I'll do it. But I'm not the important one here right now. You are."

Jerome's observant expression dialed down a notch. "Oh. I am?" he said, as if her attentiveness was a mere curiosity.

Bessie wasn't one for long sentences, she thought she stole too much of someone's time that way, but once she started on this tangent, she couldn't stop. She was so lost on how well and how sincerely she was communicating with him since the death of his mother and she needed confirmation that he truly understood. She needed to be transparent. He couldn't read her mind.

"Jerome, listen to me," she said. Eye contact wasn't one of her strongest skills, but she made a concerted effort this time. "You're my biggest priority right now, and from this day on, you will be for a very long time. Obviously I'm not very strong. I'm too small move a mountain for you. But I will be at it's base, chiseling it out of your way. No matter how long it takes me."

Jerome's eyes searched her. Probed, more like, and Bessie wasn't sure she was fond of the invasiveness of such a look, but she stuck it out. She did bring a bit of confrontation to the table, after all, even if it was in the most well-meaning way.

The breeze skimming Bessie's arm was the only indicator keeping her aware that time had not frozen. Jerome pursed his lips. His tongue bulged in his cheek as if he was still tasting and digesting her words.

Finally, his features relaxed. "I just don't want to be alone right now," he said.

Bessie didn't want to be alone, either. Her mother's warning from early that morning echoed in her head. _Don't leave the fairground. Stay in groups._

"Hey," Jerome said kindly. "I know a place where we can go."

He offered his hand out to her. Bessie knew it was very necessary to take it. She had vowed that she would indulge his every whim, to never be his barrier for fear it could close him off.

* * *

The practice tent was wide open to every person willing to use it today, yet when Bessie and Jerome entered it was empty.

"See?" he said from behind her. "Nobody here. Nobody to bother you."

Bessie walked in first, scouring the area to prove that assumption, and it was true. Equipment bore evidence of very light use in some places, but they were practically abandoned. If there were any other occupants who were here, it was likely they took a break for lunch.

With Jerome being along for the ride, Bessie didn't think her original intention of flittering across her practice line to drift away from Lila's terrible demise was going to be as attainable when Lila's own son was in view. Eventually, Bessie gave up on the idea. She was foolish from the start to think she could ever banish something so life-alteringly terrible, even for just a small reprieve. Ms Valeska's death was going to hit her even harder in the next few days, she knew it, and there would be no escape. Her brain was far from done processing and trying to pull sense from nonsensical brutality. Her mind's line of separation between reality and detachment blurred further by the hour. Ms Valeska still felt like she could return home any moment now, completely okay. Maybe it was safe to say that Jerome thought the same, given his willingness to travel all over the grounds rather than break down in tears in the safety of his own home.

There was really no other place left to go, though, so Bessie had no choice but to carry on as previously planned.

Jerome crossed his arms and leaned shoulder-side on one end of the practice apparatus, watching her walk unimpressive laps back and forth. Bessie wasn't trying anything overly technical. Today was just the equivalent of taking a walk to filter bad memories—her path was just a little more thinner and elevated than normal.

Adopting a very fluid T-pose, not at all composed like she should have done had this been a serious run, she languidly crossed from end to end, speaking to Jerome every once in a while to keep some sort of mental stimulation going rather than spiral into the mind-numbing despair they were both avoiding.

Eventually, though, they succumbed to a lapse of silence.

Jerome had gone quiet for a few minutes. "Do you ever get scared?" This was the first thing he'd said to break the stillness.

Even though Bessie was poised on the very opposite end of the line, she heard him. He was leaning his head on the apparatus, hair flattened against it.

"On this?" Bessie pointed to the cable under her feet. She bounced demonstratively. "Not really. Not even on the higher one, either. It sounds really weird, doesn't it? You know me, I'm scared of a lot of things, but I can't explain why this one never was one of them. Maybe it's because I know it so well. I trust myself on it. I trust who taught me and how."

Jerome shifted his shoulder, trying to find a comfortable spot to lean. "Aren't you scared to fall?"

"Everyone's scared of falling, nobody wants to. Training isn't just for tightrope walking, you also have to learn how to fall. It's like..." She tried to think of an example he could understand. "You know the clowns and how they always pratfall during the show?"

"Sure."

"It looks like it should hurt, but it doesn't because they know the right way to land and get back up. That's like what I had to learn, too."

The line ended. She pivoted, turning her back to Jerome for another lap the other way. While Bessie had tucked away quite a bit of information about the impact of falls from varying heights and what was the best position for the body to absorb the impact, even that wasn't a guarantee that the fall would not be critical. The clowns were human length from the ground. Bessie was suspended six times that height. The human body was ambitious, capable of amazing things, but would remain forever vulnerable from her position.

As she brought her left foot over for another step where it naturally left the cable, something solid jarred her calf, but it was enough. Her heart stopped as she teetered on her planted right foot, struggling to keep it stabilized. Her balance was thrown, falling into chaos. Adrenaline soured her blood. She wind-milled her arms, fighting to preserve her center. Her left foot jutted far out, unrestrained. She reigned it back onto the cable, unlocking her knees to keep low. The tightrope was springing but she moved with it, keeping her limbs fluid and not working against it.

She caught it, though.

Body petrified, but stable, she exhaled a constricted breath, letting the tension in her chest deflate. She did it.

Jerome's overstrung voice brought her back to Earth. He sounded much closer from where she'd last seen him. "Bessie, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to bump into you like that. I'm so sorry."

Bessie looked down to find him not at the other end anymore but almost parallel with her, just a couple degrees out of sight.

He crossed his arms ashamedly, unable to look at her. "I've been making such a mess of things all day..."

Bessie's pity returned. Instead of wasting time skipping to the stairs, she crouched and dropped off of the wire, absorbing the landing by bending her knees. "No you haven't," she insisted consolingly, rising to prove it. "It's alright. This wire isn't all that high. See?"

Depending on where you fell and on which body part, then yes, it was, but she wasn't going to tell him that.

Jerome didn't look convinced. He squirmed uncomfortably, looking at everything else but Bessie, like a child who had been reprimanded. "Are you angry with me?"

A note of hurt coated his voice. Bessie was immediately regretful. She didn't think she sounded irritated, but she must have.

"No," she said quickly and affirmatively, "of course not. There's nothing to get angry over."

It wasn't that she'd never fallen from her practice rope before, but the difference with all previous times was that she would always know when it was going to happen and could prep her body accordingly. This near miss put more of a squeeze on her reaction time.

"I...I should go," said Jerome, wringing his hands.

"Jerome, wait—"

"I'll see you later." He brushed past her, never making contact, but close enough to create a breeze.

"Jerome," Bessie pleaded, whirling to only find his back turned on her. She became devoid of hope of ever convincing him. "Please? Wait."

Jerome paused, and it almost looked as though he would heed Bessie.

They were, however, interrupted by a few other people who had chosen that moment to trickle in, now that lunch was over. Jerome didn't seem to be very receptive to their presence, given how he was watching them.

"I'll see you later," he said again, and he walked away.

Bessie stayed where she was. Her hope crystallized, giving fragility to something she thought she had more abundance of; not lost, but drained of radiance. She didn't want him to be alone. She worried that without supervision he was liable to hurt himself somehow. Maybe he'd be too distracted. Maybe in his state of confusion he'd create an accident. Not that he wasn't old enough to take care of himself, nor did he ever show signs of harmful tendencies, whether accidental or purposely inflicted, but Bessie worried simply for the fact that her mind could never be put to ease. His wellbeing was sacredly important to her, and with him now officially out of her sight, she could not relax.

This was exactly like those times whenever she would go into the city for an excursion day; a blaring ambulance would sometimes zip down the road, and she'd always wonder if its destination was Haly's. The bundle of concern would be small—the chances were unlikely, after all—but she could never stop that "What If?' idling at the back of her brain. If she couldn't account for everyone with her own eyes right at that moment, then she couldn't truly know they were all okay.

But still, though she felt great impulse to follow, she didn't. Jerome made it clear that he wanted to be alone. She didn't want him to be angry with her for ignoring his wishes.

Bessie attempted to go about her day and just forget, but she just felt...bad. All of the time.

She sat alone in the cafeteria, picking at her lunch. She'd only taken the smallest helpings she could sift from the buffet trays. Truth was, she was only eating out of necessity rather than want. Nobody chose that day to sit with her, everybody kind of kept to themselves or who they arrived with. That was the kind of cloud Lila Valeska's murder left over the place. People weren't much for talk today.

When her poor posture was creating too much of a pressure point in her back, she rose and dumped everything disposable on her tray into the trash. She had been too idle from sitting and her muscles needed a stretch. Leaving, she stood on the threshold of the portable, putting a hand on the wooden porch banister, giving herself a minute to just remember to calm down. The fairground spanned before her, opening many paths she could take.

By the looks of things, the veterinarian was in today. She was inside the corral nearby, tending to the horses for their check-up. Her white van was inside the border with her, the wide open hind doors giving her easy access to her supplies. A hay truck was also stationary inside the perimeter, bales piled in the truckbed. Seeing them sent a wave of nausea through Bessie. Lila's body was discovered hidden in a hay delivery truck last night, and it served as a sickening reminder. She swallowed and bounded down the steps, intent on leaving the area very quickly.

" _Pst_."

Bessie slowed. She looked side to side.

"Bess, over here," came a stage whisper.

She looked behind her. The last person she expected to find was staring right at her, resting in the shade beside the porch.

"Jerome?" she said, confused. "What...?"

He motioned her over, though not urgently or secretively like he was hiding on purpose.

Bessie obeyed. "I thought you wanted to go home?" she said, meeting up with him.

"I want to show you something," he said.

"But—"

His smile was gentle. "Come on."

He emerged from the shade, striding into the sunlight, heading for the direction of the river.

When he didn't feel her presence beside him, he turned. "You coming?" he said invitingly.

Bessie didn't get her answer, but she didn't press. She caught up, and he led the way, so set on his destination. Again, no urgency, no unbridled excitement. His gait was casual, telling her that time was not of the essence. Abrupt as his appearance was, she supposed that at least he could now be under her watch again without her having to worry, and that was enough. Whiplash whims were easy enough to handle.

"So where are we going, then?" Bessie asked. All the caravans were now behind them. A large expanse of yellow grass laid out before them, perhaps a little more than a football field's length, leading down a mild decline towards the Gotham river.

"The river's a really nice place to be. I want you to see it, too."

"Oh. Well, okay."

He didn't bring up the last hour's gap between them, and Bessie felt like the time to ask had passed.

The grassy decline was going to stop short soon. It didn't lead to the river's shoreline. Rather, they were coming to the edge of a small cliff. The blackened, rocky beach below was probably a good thirty foot drop straight down. They came to a stop on the peak of a craggy wall of hard, molded shoreline dirt that resembled rock. Small patches of grass and long, singular reeds broke through the cliff face, but definitely no ledges or footholds to be found in the erosion.

Jerome stopped under an alder tree beside them. Though it's split foundation was firmly five paces from the edge, it's thick branches stretched over, reaching beyond and hanging past the drop.

As long as Bessie stayed a safe distance away, she really could appreciate the picturesque quality of such a spot. Dappled sunlight spilled through the yellow leaves overhead. The river sparkled from its lazy current, cutting under a suspension bridge in the distance. It was a wonderful little spot of nature.

"It is very nice," she commended.

Jerome was leaning on the tree. "Want to take a closer look?"

Bessie glanced over the edge. She shook her head, laughing humourlessly at his joke. "No, I can see it fine here, don't worry."

"Long way down, isn't it?"

She looked again, barely leaning, choosing to lift her chin instead. "Yeah. You could say that," she agreed.

"Come on," he said, egging her on. He straightened up from the tree and took her wrist helpfully. "I'll help you get a better look."

Bessie thought his hold was a friendly gesture at first, but when he tugged her closer to the edge, her legs resisted. "What? Wait, wait, no—"

"It'll be fun, don't be scared," he said, grinning.

Bessie placed her free hand over his. "Jerome, no," she said, her knees bending to be closer to the ground, "we shouldn't—"

"You walk a tightrope everyday, don't you? This isn't that scary. Come on, I want you to get a really good view."

He didn't yank her, but he was strong and unyielding. Her feet pattered as she was forced closer, just a couple wrong steps away from the cliff rim.

"Don't worry," Jerome promised. He linked his other arm onto the overhanging branch beside him as leverage. "Lean forward. Take in the best view you can get. I'll hold onto you."

Bessie could handle the small thrill from tightrope walking, but her act was a controlled environment, and she was highly trained for it. She wasn't like the acrobats who relied one hundred percent on their partner. While she placed immense trust in Jerome, he wasn't an acrobat either.

Bessie gripped his wrist back to fortify her hold. She looked at him nervously. His face was very innocently encouraging. Bessie said she would not deny whatever he wanted today, but she didn't stop to consider the limitations of such a promise. She didn't think he'd suggest anything too daring. He usually would not.

"Okay, okay," she said in an exhale, swallowing. "Just a little." Just to placate him.

Jerome's eyes lit up. "That's the spirit, Bess. You've always been such a brave girl. There's nothing you wouldn't do."

Brave? Bessie didn't feel she merged with that word very well, but she supposed Jerome was still right in the sense that this wasn't _too_ different from tightrope walking. From a daring standpoint, anyway. He wouldn't drop her, and even if by some dire mishap where his grip faltered over her wrist, hers would still be clutching his. All she had to do was just make him happy for a few seconds. That was it. He wasn't forcing her to jump or something crazy like that.

She almost made a move forward, but stopped again. "But just a little, okay?" she reiterated.

Jerome nodded. "Of course, totally. Don't be scared, Bess. I've got you."

With those words locked in, Bessie was somewhat satisfied. She took one tentative step forward. Jerome now behind her, she looked over the edge one more time. Wet sand wasn't especially soft. Landing on it would almost be like landing on an asphalt slab, and that was if the rocks didn't get you first. Planting her feet firmly flat, she leaned just a couple degrees forward, still very much balanced on her own two legs without much of Jerome's help, easy enough to recover from.

"Mm-hm," she confirmed. "It is nice." She wasn't really lying, either. An unobstructed view really did open up the river, but she did still have more of a preference to see it through a transparent walkway or something similar. She was ready to come back now.

"That's it? You can barely see it," Jerome said.

Bessie was about to come back on her own when Jerome veered her further, and she suddenly found herself balancing on the balls of her toes, her arm pulling behind her. Their link remained strong, but the stability and strength involved was definitive now. Bessie's hair slanted at a more unnatural angle than she would have liked.

"Okay," she said calmly. She kept her legs rigid so as not to upset their point of foundation. She made a quarter turn so that she could face him. "Very funny. You can pull me up now, please."

Jerome wore a tight smile, almost ear to ear, lips so pressed together that their blushing pink almost chameleoned into his pale skin. His dark eyes bored into hers blankly. Like a robot having wound down, displaying it's last expression.

The more the seconds stretched without Bessie returning to stable ground, the more she let that little trickle of antsiness leak in. Any second felt like the one, but it wasn't coming.

"Jerome?"

He blinked, showing that he was 'awake', whatever that was supposed to mean given his stalled demeanor. He appeared distracted, yet his eye contact was as fixed as ever.

What was he waiting for? She got it. She got the joke. This should have been over now.

"Jerome?" Bessie murmured a little louder. She couldn't filter out the tremble at the end of his name this time. This was uncomfortable before, but now she was really dreading if she lost him as her anchor if either of them happened to accidentally let go. Feeling nothing but a draft under her bottom was beginning to scare her a little bit. Just because she walked a literal thin line everyday did not mean she wasn't scared to fall. Not just fall. Plummet. Feel the cold rush of air slide up her skin and allow her hair gravity-defying flight, ironically constrictive even though her immediate surroundings were wide open and obstruction free. Just encapsulated by cold until the hard, unforgiving ground put a stop to it.

In an easy feat of strength, Jerome pulled Bessie back up and she was safely upright again. A strange, unwelcome sensation of vertigo enveloped her. Her lungs felt like they'd shrunk three times their size. The sound of her whispery panting reached her own ears and suddenly she realized she was unintentionally telegraphing very clearly what she thought.

"What?" Jerome teased brightly. "You didn't actually think I was going to drop you, did you?"

"Uh." She paused, maybe a little more disoriented than she liked. "No," she said vehemently. "No, no."

Jerome's amusement faded. "Are you angry with me?"

"What?" Bessie was too preoccupied wiping her hands on her shirt. There was no dirt really, she just needed an outlet for her tense energy and that seemed nonchalant enough. "Oh. No, no. Just...a little spooked."

"You thought I was going to drop you."

"What? No! No, no, never." She was desperate not to hurt his feelings. He was just having a bit of fun, that was all. He knew what he was doing. He just wanted to make her laugh.

He was silent, his eyes searching hers for something only he was looking for. Then, he reached, clasping her fingers loosely, delicately. "Don't you trust me?" Worry created grooves in his forehead.

Bessie enclosed her fingers with his to reiterate her forgiveness. "Of course I trust you. That's not even a question."

Jerome's smile was soft. Maybe one of relief, from what Bessie could tell.

"Thanks, Bess," he said. "It's nice to be trusted."

* * *

 **A/N: Daaaang, I've been looking up the stats on this story, and it's gotten a ton of views lately! Thanks to every one of you, I'm grateful for the chance!**  
 **Apologies for the long gap between this update and the last, I've had a recent increase in hours at work. It's slowed down a little now, though. I want to get this out just as much as you guys do, believe me. I might come back and edit this one a little bit more, I wasn't 100% happy with it, but I needed to get it out pronto, I've made you guys wait too long already. Nothing major, just sentence clean-up and the like.**  
 **Approximately three more chapters to go...**

 _Jeromeisminelol -_ Hm, you're very perceptive ;)

 _Nexus_ \- Oh for sure, for sure, it's just the way things go on this website. I never planned on stopping or slowing down either way. I certainly didn't want to come off as whiny about it, so I hope that's not how it looked. I accept it as a reality. Thanks a lot for your input and for your encouraging words!

 _Guest_ \- Update? Sure thing! Hope this one was to your satisfaction. The _best_ Jerome fanfic to you? Ohhh my gosh, my heart again...Thank you! I am thrilled to hear that it stands out to you.


	12. A World Gone Dark

Bessie plopped onto the ground, absorbing the feeling of leveled terrain. She flattened her palms on the dead grass on either side of her, as confirmation that it was firm and it was there. On the outside, she was the picture of calm, perhaps even meditative, but on the inside she was working on regulating her thumping heartbeat back to tranquility. Even though her hands were getting smeared from touching patches of dirt where the grass thinned, the gritty texture was a welcome thing.

Jerome dropped down cross-legged beside her, serene, far removed from his adventurous display just a minute earlier. Bessie had to consider that in her state of anxiousness maybe things had looked a lot more threatening than they really were. Fear had a tendency exaggerate heights, give ferocity to a voice, or pull shadows on faces that weren't actually there.

"I like it here," Jerome contemplated. "It's quiet."

The moment had passed for Bessie to delve into they whys and hows of his spontaneity just a minute earlier. Choosing to leave it in the past, she chose to agree. She liked this spot, too. However, like every spot of land before it, Haly's would eventually pack up and move on, and Bessie and Jerome would follow. Nothing geographical was permanent in their lives. With that came a learned appreciation for the fleeting moments of discovery, where they could just absorb their location and commit the more stand-out landscapes to memory.

"Just wish mom could be here to see it."

Bessie stilled and had to turn down to look into her lap. She nodded sympathetically. "I know you do," was all she could muster.

She wanted to say something better than empty words. What was that even supposed to mean anyway? Just an acknowledgement of his grief? But Lila's death erased Bessie's vocabulary beyond base words. The more she tried to find a response Jerome could actually use, the more sparse her options became. Death was very roundabout in that way. You could spend your whole life striving for more and better, but ultimately, death brought you back to basics—the ultimate equalizer.

Bessie shook her head. She didn't want to continue that train of thought anymore.

Jerome then rose with a purpose, like he didn't wish to stay. Bessie looked up at him, anticipating his next venture. Their departure felt too sudden, she could have stayed, but clearly Jerome didn't want to. Her heart had calmed by now.

Jerome paid no mind to Bessie's dirtied hands. He offered his own to her, helping her stand. "Wouldn't want you to get bored out here."

Bessie was about to say otherwise, that she was far from bored, but Jerome was already leading her like a tugboat, in the direction back to Haly's. Bessie was aware how moments to get her say came fleetingly today, but once Jerome set his mind on something, she let herself become malleable. Today was not about her. To his credit, he was not pushy or rough. Never was.

"Where are we going?" Bessie asked.

She considered that perhaps her voice had been too gentle, for Jerome didn't look behind, nor did he seem to hear. However, she accepted it and didn't repeat her question. She'd find out eventually anyway.

The Valeska caravan became bigger as it neared. The expansive field was behind them. Bessie thought Jerome was going to stop at home, but instead, he kept leading her past it.

"I'm kind of getting thirsty," he explained. "That was a bit of walk. You wanna go get something to drink?"

"Um, sure. That sounds good."

He maneuvered to a small cluster of food carts lining the fairground's long path to the Big Top's entrance. Bessie didn't know why Jerome was still holding her hand to lead her, she easily could have kept up with him on her own, but maybe it was more of a comfort thing than anything else. She said nothing of it.

As an autumn specialty, Haly's Circus set up a special apple cider cart in addition to all the popcorn, cotton candy, hot roasted peanuts, and other circus staples. The cart changed with the seasons: s'mores were for spring, summer had watermelon slices, and winter was hot chocolate.

Miguel, the small man in charge of the apple cider cart today, noticed Jerome almost right away. He came around, taking the time to extend his condolences. Jerome's eyes were downcast as he accepted in thanks. Again, Bessie felt like she shouldn't have been there to hear such heartfelt, privately extended words, but Jerome held fast onto her, leaving her no opening to take a few tactful steps backward. She bowed her head solemnly in replacement, pretending she couldn't hear, but it was inevitable that she would pick up all of it.

When her discomfort became just a little overbearing, Bessie made a minor, non-disruptive flinch in her fingers to release Jerome so that she could hang back properly. She loosened her hand in order to slide away. Jerome's fingers sensed the change and constricted tighter over hers in response, harmless but unyielding. Bessie didn't attempt again. He wanted her to stay where she was.

Miguel was quick to offer them both a cup, which they accepted. Jerome finally let Bessie go. Plastic cup of apple cider in hand, Jerome doubled back to his caravan, trusting that Bessie would follow, which she of course did. She hung back momentarily to thank Miguel before catching up.

Returning the short way back, Jerome came to a halt in the shade of his home. He faced Bessie, both hands encircling his cup, tapping his fingers over it. He seemed like his typical self again, soft-spoken and non-confrontational. "Did you want to sit down?" he asked as though he were asking her to dance, like it took just a little extra courage.

"I wouldn't mind," Bessie said.

Jerome led her around to the trailer's end that pointed down to the river where they'd come from. A large mound of rock jutted from the ground, like nature itself decided to craft a bench. The rock was high enough where Bessie had to make a small jump to seat herself on it, but not jarring enough to spill a drop. The makeshift stone bench could have easily seated a third, leaving Bessie a lot of wiggle room to sway and shimmy until she found an adequate groove to align perfectly in. Jerome's longer legs allowed him much more versatility and ease of access. He sat down with less effort. While Bessie could bounce her heels off the rock face, her feet dangling quite a bit off the ground, Jerome could merely point his toes and make touchdown.

Jerome released a long, mournful sigh. He looked into his cup, then tipped it back, taking a leisurely sip. He rolled his tongue in his mouth, tasting the cider. He raised his cup toward Bessie.

"It's good," he said. While the words were true, a new heaviness seemed to burden him, unrelated to his opinion on the apple cider. Bessie could not get used to this back and forth with his moods, but at the same time she could not condemn him for it, nor put any more weight to it than what it was. This was normal. Grief was a tide, it ebbed and flowed, rose and fell. Unpredictability was the new predictability.

Bessie took a sip for herself. The first taste of the apple tartness put a squeeze on her tongue, delaying the flavor at first, but in seconds it went down smooth. She liked the apple cider that came with the autumn days, truly she did. It reminded her of home, of childhood, of pine-scented outdoors, of happy, content years past. But none of that was coming right now. The effects were nullified. She just wished she had a happy occasion worth celebrating today. "You're right," she said. "It is good."

Jerome tried to smile, but it puttered out. There wasn't enough fuel behind it. He looked out at the Gotham skyline. "We've circled back to this city a few times over the years, haven't we? I know it's a rough place, but...didn't think we'd ever have a reason to remember it as anything other than just another city on our map."

Bessie placed her cup down beside her, unable to continue twisting it in her hands without looking antsy or uncomfortable. She leaned forward, elbows propped on her thighs. She had to agree. Gotham had burrowed into in each member of Haly's after last night. The city was forever marked in their hearts as the place where Lila Valeska came to her grisly end.

Bessie nodded. "It'll always look very different now—"

Jerome sneezed behind her, startling Bessie. "Sorry," Jerome said dismissively. "Allergies."

Bessie considered that for a moment. Jerome didn't have allergies. Not any that she knew of or remembered anyway. Did one develop in the last year? She did miss a considerable bit within that timeline, to be fair. "When—?"

"What am I going to do? For the funeral, I mean. How...how am I going to get through it?"

Bessie changed her train of thought in an instant. "You won't be by yourself. Haly's will be beside you." To do so would be willing duty by all, not obligation. Bessie was so certain of this that there was no other scenario to entertain. This was the one outcome.

Jerome was looking into his lap, contemplating this. "Promise?" he said meekly.

"Cross my heart a hundred times over."

"I can't do this without anyone...without you."

Bessie's heart clanged, sending a vibration through her bones. A bundle of nerves knotted in her gut. She touched her plastic cup beside her, wishing for the comfort of the familiar apple taste again, like it would build her courage. She nodded. "I'll try not to let you down. I'll really, really try."

A wooziness was secretly rocking her insides like an ocean breaking on the shore. She took another steady sip of cider, hoping to drown that feeling. Hoping to drown the fear that Lila's murderer was not found. A small pressure was building in her forehead, likely from all the stress that began last night.

"Any news from the police yet?" asked Bessie. Maybe it was too soon, maybe analysis on the clues wasn't complete yet. The crime would still be considered fresh, the case just opened afterall, but precious minutes became agonizingly long hours when time wasn't a given anymore. Someone else's could run out very soon. The GCPD would have had to have picked up a scent by now, wouldn't they?

"I haven't heard anything from them since I went to the station this morning," said Jerome, dejected.

That wasn't the answer Bessie hoped for, but it was the one that had the misfortune of making the most sense.

The pressure in her forehead's onset worked amazingly fast. Jerome was saying something, but now the dull ache in Bessie's head wasn't so much pressure as it was compression behind her eyes. If it got any worse, she'd have to tell Jerome she would go home to lay it off for a little bit. She picked up her drink, taking a large swig.

Jerome seemed to notice when she failed to answer what had clearly been a question. "Don't you think?" he apparently repeated. He paused. "Hey, you all right? You seem a little distracted."

"All this tension is making my head ache." It was true, Bessie's brain did feel thicker in her skull.

She resolved to lay her head on Jerome's shoulder—the only makeshift pillow within distance—but in a rare bout of clumsiness, her equilibrium was thrown off and she fell rather more heavily than she would have liked. It didn't hurt, though. She lost control for a second, she went in too fast. Jerome didn't seem bothered. He smiled down at her sweetly, then looked out at the river again, and rubbed her arm consolingly. His sweater was not crafted of scratchy yarn, the material was soft on Bessie's cheek, and warmed comfortingly by his body heat.

"I'm going to help you get through all this," Bessie promised.

"I know you will. You've always had my back, Bess. I couldn't ask for a better friend."

Bessie let those words hover, letting them be the sound that echoed for the next little while. She still wasn't entirely sure she deserved them, given the neglect their friendship had taken in recent years, but his words still felt just as sincere.

But eventually, her frown became more powerful. "I think I'm just scared..." Bessie confided.

Jerome took a few seconds to respond. They'd both been silent for so long. "Scared?" Jerome looked down at her. "Of what?"

Bessie wished not to reignite the thought in him, but when it came to a mystery prowler who might have still been somewhere on the premises then it was a matter of safety and practicality that it be brought back to light.

"The murderer is still out there," Bessie whispered, like just the mere mention would summon Lila's killer to them. She thought back to the swankily-dressed man back in Blüdhaven that Lila brought to her caravan, the one who called Jerome freakshow. Did he hitch a ride and follow Haly's Circus to Gotham? "What if they're stalking the fairground for someone else next?" she said.

Jerome squeezed her against him reassuringly, rubbing her arm as if warming cold skin. "Shh, hey now," he said soothingly, "don't be scared, Bess. We've just got to all stick together, all right? We'll all drive ourselves to insanity trying to figure the why's and how's when what we really need to do is to keep looking out for each other."

Bessie wasn't keen on being so inactive on the hunt for Lila's justice, but that didn't make Jerome wrong. Bessie wasn't the police, she didn't know what clues they discovered. She was essentially useless to their investigation. It was a saddening compromise—Lila deserved justice, her son deserved justice—but Bessie was nobody, and as a nobody she had to stay in her place or else she would just get in the way. Helpless and defeated, no closer and no further than where she was last night, she had no choice but to continue to look out into the afternoon sky and Gotham's powerful, towering skyscrapers in the distance, miles away on the other side of the river.

Bessie's face eventually soured. Even the pleasant view wasn't enough to offset her frown. The headache that had been developing for the past five minutes was subsiding, which should have been a good thing, but it was gradually being replaced with light-headedness. It was as though the headache had filled her skull with wet concrete and was now slowly being drained, but took everything else with it. The feeling would have been blissful had it not been for the accompanying vertigo. She developed an aversion to not sitting up straight, it just felt like too much effort. Since Jerome might have wanted his shoulder back, though, she lifted herself, wobbling once as though her spine was made of jelly.

Tingles poked her lips. She absently touched her fingers to them, noting the numbing sensation overtaking her mouth. She sat up too fast maybe. Sliding off her seat gingerly, she stood up.

Jerome watched her progression curiously. "You all right?"

Bessie was facing the direction of Haly's. She felt very solid on her feet until she made a small move, which started a minor lean in her poise. She caught herself and straightened again, stiffening to not upset her composure. It felt like cotton was blocking her ears.

Her cup clattered on the packed dirt ground. She didn't remember it leaving her hand.

"Bess?" Jerome said, concerned.

Bessie blinked rapidly to fix the blur in her vision, but it was like glue smearing on a windshield. Her vision didn't get better. The ground tilted severely to the right and her legs had no choice but to follow it.

"Bess!" She felt Jerome catch her. His worried face floated into view. He was propping her up, though his strength was increasing by the second as Bessie's stability faltered. "What's happening to you? What's wrong?!"

"I-..." she croaked. Her head lolled backwards. "I..." Not even her thoughts could finish her sentence, Jerome's question never existed. Her eyelids gained a pound of weight for every ticking second. Bessie gave one last valiant effort to right her head. "He—h-help..."

Darkness crawled from the edges of her sight. Her shoulder rocked against her neck and she detected the faint sensation of her loose arm pendulum swinging, having fallen through Jerome's hold. It was a numb, useless appendage that she couldn't bring back.

She was now looking at the sky. She fought within for one more word, but all that left her lips was a timid noise of no language.

A flash of a toothy grin and Bessie's world went black.

* * *

Brief images of a field rolled past a window above her and a minor rocking and rumble Bessie could only associate with a moving vehicle snagged themselves in her consciousness, but it may as well have been a dream for how fleeting it was before her body craved sleep again and she could not deny its onset.

* * *

 **A/N: Damn. The latest episodes have some twists that are tough ones to execute my original writing plans through. Not impossible, just tough. Luckily, I think I can work with it, I only need to make little additions, not subtractions. Also very fortunate for me, everything you've read here so far will remain untouched, I will not go back and edit in little things here and there, everything here so far will stay exactly the same as it has always been.**

 **Plus, one of the latest episodes used an element I was totally going to use here. I guess I'll still use it, but damn, now it's gonna look like I completely copied that idea. I will go into more detail once this story is over, because if I do it now I will be giving away a lot.**  
 **Two more chapters to go.**  
 **(I can't truly say how I feel about the last episodes, because some people still probably have not seen it, and even if I keep every spoiler out, people can still figure something out from the context clues. So I'll say something about it maybe on the next updates).**

 _Jeromeisminelol_ \- Ooooh, lots of theories going around here, I like this thought processing and analysis. That's part of Jerome's allure, he's blunt when he wants to be, mysterious when he wants to be, he's not an easy one to decode. Thank you for your continued reading!

 _Reader12_ \- Update? Well, I dunno, I mean, I've got that hair appointment, and then there's the thing where I've got to get my piano tuned and my tune piano'd, and then there's also my hot date with my cardboard cutout of Riddler (I can't cancel that again!)  
...but okay! :D You've convinced me.


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